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January 8, 2021 By cs

Leadership changes at Enterprise Innovation Institute

Karen Fite, who, for the past 18 months has led the Georgia Institute of Technology’s economic development efforts as interim vice president and director of the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2), has retired after more than 27 years of service.

David Bridges, director of EI2’s Economic Development Lab (EDL), will assume the interim vice president role effective Jan. 1, 2021.

Karen Fite, who served as interim vice president and director of the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2), has retired after 27 years of service. David Bridges, director of EI2’s Economic Development Lab (EDL), has assumed the interim vice president role.

EI2 is the largest and most comprehensive university-based program of business and industry assistance, technology commercialization, and economic development in the United States.

Prior to leading EI2, Fite ran the unit’s Business & Industry Services group of programs, comprised of the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP), EI2’s largest economic development offering. The group also includes the Safety, Health, and Environmental Services (SHES), Atlanta MBDA Centers, Contracting Education Academy, Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC), and the Southeastern Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (SETAAC) programs.

Before taking on that role, Fite was GaMEP director.

“Over the years at Georgia Tech, I have been privileged to serve in a wide variety of capacities — assisting companies with government procurement, their implementation of quality management systems and Lean Manufacturing protocols, the launch of a Lean Healthcare initiative, creating community economic development research and strategic plans, and directing the GaMEP,” Fite said.

“As interim vice president, I have had the opportunity to interact with virtually every EI2 employee. Working with such a talented group of employees of EI2 has been an honor because across the board they are passionate about their work, dedicated to Georgia Tech’s mission of progress and service by serving clients, and continually looking to innovate, improve, and expand our services to help create long lasting and meaningful impact not only in Georgia and across the country, but around the world.”

Chaouki T. Abdallah, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research said Fite was a valued member of his leadership team.

“She has been a very effective and engaging leader,” Abdallah said. “She’s brought me solutions, given me critical feedback and has been an invaluable partner. Georgia Tech is lucky to have had her contributions for so long.”

Fite has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Miami and a bachelor’s in health systems from Georgia Tech. In 2018, she achieved the faculty rank of principal extension professional, Georgia Tech’s highest professional extension faculty rank.

“We are fortunate to have someone of David Bridges’ caliber who can not only build on Karen’s legacy but also brings a wealth of experience and economic development successes,” Abdallah said.

Bridges, who joined EI2 in 1994, authored, co-authored or contributed to more than 100 economic development grants totaling more than $40 million. He assisted in the formation of the two proof-of-concept units — the Global Center for Medical Innovation, a Tech affiliate in the medical device space, and I3L, a health information technology innovation hub.

Beyond Georgia, Bridges helped catalyze the development of the Soft Landings program to bring companies from overseas to the United States. He also helped to establish the I-Corps Puerto Rico program as the National Science Foundation’s first I-Corps program ever offered to teams from that community.

He also supported the expansion of technology extension programs in Chile and Colombia, built a new program in professional development around innovation and technology commercialization, and expanded Georgia Tech’s presence by helping to build startup ecosystems around the Institute’s international campuses and in Latin America.

Bridges and his EDL team have also implemented ecosystem building projects for numerous countries including Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Argentina, Guatemala, South Africa, China, Korea, and Japan.

Source: https://news.gatech.edu/2021/01/07/karen-fite-interim-vp-and-director-enterprise-innovation-institute-retires

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: Contracting Academy, contracting education, EI2, Enterprise Innovation Institute, GaMEP, Georgia Tech, GTPAC, MBDA, SETAAC, SHES

January 8, 2021 By cs

NIST selects 4 awardees for metals-based 3D printing research

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology has awarded nearly $4 million in grants to help accelerate the adoption of new measurement methods and standards to advance U.S. competitiveness in metals-based additive manufacturing (AM). 

Georgia Tech Research Corp., the University of Texas at El Paso, Purdue University and Northeastern University will each receive either nearly or exactly $1 million in grants under the Metals-Based Additive Manufacturing Grants Program.

Additive manufacturing typically creates parts and components by building them layer by layer, based on a 3D computer model that is virtually sliced into many thin layers. Metals-based additive processes form parts by melting or sintering material in powder form. The process offers advantages such as reduced material waste, lower energy intensity, reduced time to market and just-in-time production.

Through its own research and with these grants, NIST is addressing barriers to adoption of additive manufacturing, including surface finish and quality issues, dimensional accuracy, fabrication speed, material properties and computational requirements.

The following organizations will receive NIST Metals-Based Additive Manufacturing Grants Program funding to be spent over two years:

Georgia Tech Research Corporation ($1 million)
This project will analyze detailed data gathered during a powder bed fusion process to both control the manufacturing and predict the final properties of the manufactured parts. The goal is to establish a comprehensive basis to qualify, verify and validate parts produced by this technique. The initial focus will be on an alloy of titanium that could see extensive applications in the health care and aerospace sectors.

University of Texas at El Paso ($1 million)
This project will define a test artifact that will standardize the collection of data on the process inputs and performance of parts made via laser powder bed fusion, an important method of metals-based AM. Academic, government and industrial partners will replicate the artifact and collect data on the key inputs to the process and the resulting properties of the artifact for a data repository. The work will lead to a greater understanding of the AM process and will allow for greater confidence in final parts.

Purdue University ($999,929)
Qualification of parts made by AM now requires an extensive set of tests. This project aims to reduce that burden by developing a standardized approach to predict key performance properties through measurements of material microstructures and the use of mathematical models. The work promises to create a streamlined method for industry to understand part performance with less testing than is currently required.

Northeastern University ($999,464)
This project aims to improve sensing approaches and create a suite of sensor technologies that will help optimize cold spray additive manufacturing. Cold spray AM processes have the potential to create parts that are more durable and stronger than those made with other AM processes. New sensors will help characterize the properties of the powder feedstock and the key parameters of the process, such as temperatures and part dimensions, and allow for better control of this promising technique.

In addition to these awards, NIST anticipates funding additional projects as part of a second phase of awards in the first half of 2021.

NIST, a nonregulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.

Source: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2020/12/nist-awards-nearly-4-million-support-metals-based-additive-manufacturing

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Georgia Tech, NIST

August 19, 2020 By cs

Georgia Tech to lead technology coalition to advance inclusive innovation across the state

Announced by Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan on Aug. 17, Georgia Tech will take a lead role in the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation, a public-private partnership created to foster technology access, growth, entrepreneurship, and evolution across the state of Georgia. The organization is the first of its kind — a statewide, public-private partnership built from the ground up entirely in a virtual environment.

The new organization follows the foundational work of the Georgia Innovates Task Force, established by Lt. Gov. Duncan in January 2020. The task force, under the chairmanship of G.P. “Bud” Peterson, president emeritus of Georgia Tech, and former U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, made recommendations last month to formalize efforts that will establish the state as a national leader in technology research, development, and implementation.  Peterson will continue as board chair.  Debra Lam, current managing director of Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation at Georgia Tech, has been named executive director of the new organization.

“Through collaboration between industry and education, the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation has the potential to transform our entire state and the lives of its citizens,” said Ángel Cabrera, president, Georgia Tech. “ We are very grateful to Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan for creating the Georgia Innovates Task Force earlier this year, and for the thousands of volunteer hours that my predecessor, co-chair G.P. “Bud” Peterson, and other civic and community leaders and supporting organizations invested in creating this exciting vision.  We at Georgia Tech are honored to help Georgia maximize inclusive innovation throughout our state.”

Following the recommendations of the task force and building on the state’s existing infrastructure and leadership, the organization’s focus will center on “foundational, transformational, and sustaining” work throughout the state of Georgia that is guided by principles of connectedness, talent, diversity, sustainability, and identity.  Pilot programs will focus on providing access to digital resources and education; advancing agriculture, food system innovation, venture capital growth, and lab-to-market tech transfer; and ensuring resources, access, and opportunities are sustained via public-private partnerships.

Advancement efforts will include a series of high-impact, low-cost pilot programs, including K-12 Digital Readiness, Advanced Food Supply Innovation, and Regional Industry/Education Collaboratives. The first set of pilots, including Civic Data Science for Equitable Development in Savannah and a Traffic Monitoring and Communication System in Valdosta, were recently announced by the Georgia Smart Communities Challenge.

Georgia Tech research across a broad range of disciplines, including optical technology, will help define Georgia’s identity as a national leader in technology research, development and implementation. (Credit: Christa Ernst, Georgia Tech)

“Georgia Tech’s leadership role in the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation is an ongoing testament to its strategic mission of advancing technology to improve the human condition,” said Lam. “The Partnership for Inclusive Innovation’s establishment also reflects the level and depth of statewide commitment to improve access and opportunities for all Georgians.  It was an honor to work with the full Georgia Innovates Task Force, and I look forward to working with the esteemed board of advisors and the greater innovation ecosystem to deliver real impact.”

Additional pilots are planned, with the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation working closely with local governments, startups, nonprofits, and other collaborators, increasing access to educational, entrepreneurial, and technological opportunities for Georgians as well as attracting new talent to the state’s workforce. Program funding will be provided through a combination of state, industry, and philanthropic support.

Joining Peterson and Lam, the board for the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation will include members representing government, industry, and higher education organizations.

Source: http://news.gatech.edu/2020/08/17/georgia-tech-lead-technology-coalition-advance-inclusive-innovation-across-state

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: diversity, entrepreneurship, Georgia Innovates Task Force, Georgia Tech, innovation, optical technology, Partnership for Inclusive Innovation, pilot, research, Smart Cities, sustainability, technology

July 23, 2020 By cs

Georgia Tech’s Economic Development Administration University Center awarded $300,000 grant

Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) is awarding a $300,000 CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to the Georgia Institute of Technology’s EDA University Center.

The grant will be used to boost the center’s capacity to support regional economic development strategies in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Trump Administration is eager to allocate these essential CARES Act funds and deliver on our promise to help American communities recover from the impact of COVID-19,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in a statement. “I am proud of the perseverance and strength shown by our communities coast to coast throughout this pandemic, and these funds will help provide Georgia with the necessary resources to make a swift and lasting economic comeback.”

The CARES Act, signed into law by President Donald J. Trump, provides EDA with $1.5 billion for economic development assistance programs to help communities prevent, prepare for, and respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance, which is being administered under the authority of the bureau’s flexible Economic Adjustment Assistance (EAA) (PDF) program, provides a wide-range of financial assistance to eligible communities and regions as they respond to and recover from the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

EDA university centers marshal the resources found in colleges and universities to support regional economic development strategies in areas challenged with chronic and acute economic distress.

Tech was the first institution of higher learning to be designated an EDA University Center when the program was launched in the 1960s. It has been an EDA award recipient since inception — the only institute of higher learning with that distinction.

Tech’s EDA University Center, an offering of its economic development arm, the Enterprise Innovation Institute, will use the CARES Act funding to support three specific activities with businesses, communities, and entrepreneurs in Georgia:

  • Conduct, share, and disseminate applied research to address specific challenges or needs, or solve specific problems resulting from the economic impacts of coronavirus.
  • Provide technical assistance to entrepreneurs, businesses and communities to assist in their recovery efforts from the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Assist communities in identifying, defining, and supporting their workforce talent with the goal of helping communities recover from the economic impacts of coronavirus.

“We always incorporate new, innovative approaches in working with our clients,” said Georgia Tech EDA University Center Director Lynne Henkiel. “Georgia businesses and communities are all dealing with the effects that COVID-19 on their operations and local economies. This funding will help support our work and development of programs and training for business and community leaders to evaluate and reassess their activities to help them get back up and operating quickly.”

Among some of the services that Tech’s EDA University Center will offer under grant include business counseling, feasibility studies, and resilience plans, as well as skills development and workforce training, among other offerings.

“This investment comes at a crucial time to help Georgia’s and our nation’s economy come roaring back and provide hard-working Americans with new opportunities,” said Dana Gartzke, performing the delegated duties of the assistant secretary of commerce for economic development. “We are pleased to make this investment in Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute to respond to the coronavirus pandemic by assisting communities across Georgia develop short and long-term resilience plans with additional support for workforce development initiatives.”

In 2018, the most recent reporting data available, the EDA University Center at Georgia Tech worked with 13 clients and helped them save or create 57 jobs and secure more than $1.4 million in private and public sector investments.

Source: https://innovate.gatech.edu/blog/georgia-tech-economic-development-administration-university-center-awarded-300k-grant/

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: CARES Act, economic development, EDA, EDA University Center, EI2, Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Tech

May 28, 2020 By cs

Georgia Tech researchers receive NIH funds for adjuvant research to boost Coronavirus vaccines

Researchers have received funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, to screen and evaluate certain molecules known as adjuvants that may improve the ability of coronavirus vaccines to stimulate the immune system and generate appropriate responses necessary to protect the general population against the virus.

“The adjuvants that we are studying, known as pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), are molecules often found in viruses and bacteria, and can efficiently stimulate our immune system,” explained Krishnendu Roy, a professor and Robert A. Milton Chair in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. “Most viruses have several of these molecules in them, and we are trying to mimic that multi-adjuvant structure.”

Adjuvants are used with some vaccines to help them create stronger protective immune responses in persons receiving the vaccine. The research team will screen a library of various adjuvant combinations to quickly identify those that may be most useful to enhance the effects of both protein- and RNA-based coronavirus vaccines under development.

“We are trying to understand how adjuvant combinations affect the vaccine response,” Roy said. “We will look at how the immune system shifts and changes with the adjuvant combinations. The ultimate goal is to determine how to generate the most effective, strongest, and most durable immune response against the virus. There are more than a hundred vaccine candidates being developed for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, and it is likely that many will generate initial antibody responses. It remains to be seen how long those responses will last and whether they can generate appropriate immunological memory that protects against subsequent virus exposures in the long-term.”

The parent grant to Georgia Tech is part of a program called “Molecular Mechanisms of Combination Adjuvants (MMCA).” For the past four years, the agency has been supporting Roy and his research team to pursue studies to understand how adjuvants work, and this additional funding will allow them to apply their research to potential coronavirus vaccines.

“It has been difficult to develop safe and durable vaccines against respiratory viruses,” explained Roy, who also directs the Center for ImmunoEngineering.  “Over the past several years, we have been looking mostly at the basic science and understanding how the immune system integrates signals from multiple adjuvants to create a unified immune response in mammals. This new funding will allow us to pursue more translational aspects related to COVID-19 and provide the scientific community with potentially new tools to fight this devastating pandemic.”

The team has developed a technique that uses micron- and nanometer-scale polymer particles to present both the vaccine antigen and adjuvant compounds to the mammalian immune system. The medical polymer that is the basis for the particles is used for other purposes in the body.

The synthetic particles, which Roy’s team calls pathogen-like particles (PLPs), are designed to mimic real pathogens in terms of how they elicit immune responses – without causing infection. “They have an antigen and multiple synergistic adjuvants on a particle-structure that is very similar to how native pathogens present these molecules to our immune system,” he said.

The PLPs combined with adjuvants encourage the immune system to develop antibodies and T cell responses that can battle the real pathogen if it attacks. Having existing antibodies and the appropriate virus-fighting T cells to the novel coronavirus will enable the body’s immune system to respond quickly to the threat of infection and potentially destroy the virus quickly.

The researchers will first evaluate how the adjuvants affect the interaction of specific immune cells, called dendritic cells and macrophages, with T cells – a key component of generating immune system response – and then follow up with animal studies using the promising combinations. Whether or not a vaccine can be created that will provide long-term protective immunity against the coronavirus is still an open question in the research community, and Roy said the research into adjuvants will help provide new tools to answer that question.

Krishnendu Roy, a professor and Robert A. Milton Chair in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, and his research team has received NIH funding to screen and evaluate certain molecules known as adjuvants that may improve the ability of coronavirus vaccines to stimulate the immune system. (Photo: Rob Felt, Georgia Tech)

“Part of the knowledge gap right now is that we don’t know how the immune system is influenced by various adjuvants,” he said. “We need to look at how the vaccine formulations, our particles and the adjuvants affect T cell proliferation and T cell response, and how we can optimize that response to generate durable immunity.”

The adjuvant Alum has been used since the 1930s to boost the action of the immune system as it responds to antigens in vaccines that elicit protection against many pathogens. However, for those pathogens that require alternative adjuvants, only a few other adjuvants are currently used in commercial vaccines. Research on modern adjuvants aims to understand the way they specifically activate our immune systems and can be designed to protect against infections. Another approach is to find out if combinations of adjuvants are safe and more effective than a single adjuvant providing highly effective and long-lasting protective immunity.

Roy and his team will be evaluating existing adjuvants in combination, along with potential protein and RNA-based antigens currently under evaluation. The goal is to develop novel combinations of current adjuvants, including adjuvants approved for use and others that are still in development. “In this work, the strategy is to take existing platforms and see how we can pivot them to understand how to make the COVID vaccines better, and do it rapidly.”

As with other research into potential coronavirus vaccines, the work is being accelerated with the goal of creating a safe and effective vaccine against the pandemic virus as soon as possible.

“There are multiple efforts that the NIH and others are funding to really accelerate the pace of the work to see how many different approaches we can come up with and to evaluate the differences,” Roy said. “The goal is to determine what data we can generate very quickly to move toward a successful vaccine that is safe, durable, affordable, scalable, and effective. Evaluating different approaches will help increase the likelihood that we’ll find one or more that meet these criteria.”

Source: http://www.news.gatech.edu/2020/05/20/researchers-receive-nih-funds-adjuvant-research-boost-coronavirus-vaccines


This research is supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under supplemental funding to award number U01AI124270. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.


For more coverage of Georgia Tech’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our Responding to COVID-19 page.

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: coronavirus, COVID-19, Georgia Tech, NIH, pandemic, research

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