Biofuels
Basak Kalkanci is an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology Scheller College of Business. Her current research focuses on socially and environmentally responsible supply chain management, behavioral operations management, supply risk management, contracting and information sharing in supply chains. She worked as a postdoctoral associate at MIT before joining Georgia Tech.
Her work appeared in leading journals such as Management Science, Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management. She is the recipient of the Georgia Power Professor of Excellence (2015), M&SOM Meritorious Service Award (2014), Management Science Meritorious Service Award (2015, 2017), and ARCS Emerging Sustainability Scholar Award (2019).
Prof. Kalkanci's research focuses on socially and environmentally responsible supply chain management, contracting and the role of information in decentralized supply chains, and social impacts of on-demand service platforms.
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.
Geographic Information Science and Technology
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.
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.
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.
W. Jud Ready is the executive director of the Space Research Institute. Prior to this role, he served as associate director of external engagement for the Georgia Tech Institute for Matter and Systems and director of the Georgia Tech Center for Space Technology and Research. He has also been an adjunct professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech and a principal research engineer on the research faculty of Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) for over a dozen years. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty, he worked for a major military contractor (General Dynamics) as well as in small business (MicroCoating Technologies). He has served as PI or co-PI for grants totaling ~$17M awarded by the Army, Navy, Air Force, DARPA, NASA, NSF, NIST, industry, charitable foundations and the States of Georgia and Florida. His current research focuses primarily on energy, aerospace, nanomaterial applications, and electronics reliability.
Materials Failure and Reliability; Carbon Nanotubes; Integrated photonics; Photovoltaics; Solar
Samuel Graham is the Rae S. and Frank H. Neely Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He also holds an appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech and a joint appointment with the Energy and Transportation Science Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratories. His research focuses on the packaging and reliability of electronic devices ranging from wide bandgap semiconductors to flexible organic electronics and wearable sensors. His is a member of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics at Georgia Tech and a co-founder of the Heat Lab which provides thermal solutions for electronics packaging.
Heat Transfer; Nanostructured Materials; Electronic Systems, Devices, Components, & Packaging; Materials Failure and Reliability; Thermal Systems
Germán Vergara (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) specializes in environmental and Latin American history. His research and teaching explore environmental change, animal history, energy regimes, and the ecological problems of capitalism(s) and industrialization in Latin America, which he tries hard to locate in a global context.
His first book, Fueling Mexico: Energy and Environment, 1850-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), examined how and why modern Mexico transitioned from an agrarian society powered by animal muscle, water, and wood to a fossil-fueled industrial society. Within a century, Mexico went from an energy regime based on dispersed solar energy accumulated in plants and human and animal muscle to one based on the concentrated ancient sunlight trapped in fossil fuels. The book argues that the shift to a carbon-based society has been the main agent of environmental, economic, and social change in Mexico for over a century. The decision to power the country’s economy with fossil fuels locked Mexico in a cycle of endless, fossil-fueled growth. Fueling Mexico is the first study to look at the historical roots of today's global fossil-fuel energy regime from a Latin American perspective. The book was the recipient of the 2021-2023 Elinor Melville Prize for Latin American Environmental History (Conference on Latin American History-CLAH) and received an honorable mention for Best Book in the Humanities 2022 from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).
Germán's second book project focuses on the biodiversity and extinction crisis in the Americas. Recent estimates suggest that 41 percent of described amphibians, 26 percent of mammals, and 13 percent of birds currently face the threat of extinction worldwide. One of the global centers of biodiversity, the Americas are at the heart of the current extinction crisis. Few regions of the world have experienced as many extinctions or near extinctions as the Western Hemisphere. The book will examine the historical roots of this crisis, adopting a very long-term perspective to better understand the social, cultural, and economic patterns that have resulted in high rates of species loss. Somewhat unwisely, the book will travel from the Late Pleistocene to the modern history of capitalism in the region to ponder whether humans are a uniquely adept species at extinguishing other life forms. Less abstractly, the book will discuss topics such as the recent capitalist commodification of animals and nature, scientific ideas about extinction, animal-human relations, and conservation efforts in the Americas over the centuries.
Germán has published on energy, forest history, animal history, species extinctions, and has a forthcoming chapter on the environmental history of mining in Mexico. His article "How Coal Kept My Valley Green: Forest Conservation, State Intervention, and the Transition to Fossil Fuels in Mexico" was published in Environmental History. "Animals in Latin American History" appeared in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American History. He co-edited and co-authored the Forum "Extinction and Its Interventions in the Americas" for Environmental History in 2022.
After earning his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, Germán spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow in environmental history at Brown University. He has received fellowships from the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS), the Charles A. Hale Fellowship for Mexican History from the Latin American Studies Association, and the USMEX Fellowship Program at the University of California, San Diego. He was selected as the 2022-23 Cisneros Visiting Scholar of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University.
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Agriculture, Health, and the Environment Energy, Climate and Environmental Policy Global Cities and Urban Society History of Technology/Engineering and Society Modern Global History/Science, Technology, and Nationalism
Brian Woodall received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, and, prior to joining Georgia Tech's faculty, held full-time faculty positions at the University of California at Irvine and Harvard University. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Tokyo, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tohoku University, and Kobe University. He is the author of Growing Democracy in Japan (University Press of Kentucky), Japan Under Construction (University of California Press), and Japan's Changing World Role (Japan Society), and co-editor of Elections in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan Under the Single Non-Transferable Vote (University Michigan Press). His research and teaching utilize the tools of comparative institutional analysis to illuminate a variety of issues, including disaster governance, megaregion sustainability, and sustainable energy security. Dr. Woodall's recent work has appeared in Progress in Disaster Science, International Journal of Urban Sciences, Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Journal of Urban Planning and Development, Transportation Research Record, and Resilient Cities and Structures. He is also the creator of the Japanese Cabinets and Cabinet Members Dataset, which is accessible via the Harvard Dataverse. Dr. Woodall has received funding from the Fulbright Commission, Coca-Cola Foundation, U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, the Abe Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council, the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program, and the Japan Foundation. In addition, he serves as Associate Director of the Nakatani RIES Program and as a member of Kobe University's Board of Advisors. Dr. Woodall was decorated by the Government of Japan with The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette for his contributions to academic exchange and mutual understanding between Japan and the United States.
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Areas of Expertise:
Electrical Grid; Electronics
Dr. Bryan Norton is a Professor of Philosophy in the School of Public Policy. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Michigan in 1970, specializing in the philosophy of science and conceptual change in, and across, scientific disciplines. He writes on inter-generational equity, sustainability theory, bio-diversity policy and on valuation methods. His specialty is the integration of spatio-temporal scaling considerations into sustainability criteria. He is currently working to develop a flexible notion of sustainability that recognizes the challenges of rapidly changing climate.
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Policy/Economics
Biography
Dr. Donald Webster received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994. After a postdoctoral research position at Stanford University and a non-tenure track faculty position at the University of Minnesota, he joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in September 1997. For nearly two decades, he has been part of the School's leadership team, serving as an affinity group coordinator 2012-2014, the associate chair for undergraduate programs 2007-2012, the associate chair for graduate programs 2012-2013, and the associate chair for finance and administration 2013-2018. In May 2018, he became the Karen and John Huff School Chair. Dr. Webster's research expertise lies in environmental fluid mechanics, with an emphasis on the influence of fluid mechanics and turbulence on biological systems. He has authored or co-authored over 110 refereed research articles. In recognition of these contributions, Dr. Webster is a Sustaining Fellow of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) and a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). In 2016, his work on pteropod (i.e., the flying sea snail) biomechanics was featured in the New York Times among over 80 news agencies. Dr. Webster has been very active in professional service. He has served on the editorial board for the journal Experiments in Fluids since 2006 and has served on numerous conference and symposium advisory committees as well as other society committees. Dr. Webster developed several special topical sessions for the Ocean Science Meeting as well as the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics annual meeting, and used these forums to define the area of “Ecological Fluid Mechanics,” which broadly seeks to address the role that fluid motion, flow gradients, and chemical stirring play in shaping organism behavior, interactions, recruitment, reproduction, and community structure. Dr. Webster holds a professional engineering license (PE) in Georgia.
Research
Dr. Webster's research expertise lies in environmental fluid mechanics, with an emphasis on the influence of fluid mechanics and turbulence on biological systems. His contributions have been in three arenas: 1) illuminating the fluid mechanics processes related to sensory biology and biomechanics; 2) developing advanced experimental techniques and facilities; and 3) translating research results into bio-inspired design. Examples of innovative and creative contributions include turbulent chemical plume tracking by blue crabs, biologically-inspired design of a robotic tracker of turbulent chemical plumes, tomographic (3D) particle image velocimetry of zooplankton propulsion (krill, copepods, pteropods, daphnids), zooplankton aggregations around oceanic thin layer structure, and copepod-turbulence interactions.
Education
Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering University of California at Berkeley 1994
M.S. Mechanical Engineering University of California at Berkeley 1991
B.S. Mechanical Engineering University of California at Davis 1989
Teaching
Dr. Webster's educational activities include teaching courses in fluid mechanics, as well as rigid body dynamics. He is known for his efforts to develop effective blended (or flipped) classroom pedagogy for engineering mechanics courses. He has documented the effectiveness of the approach via a series of publications. Dr. Webster played a key role in developing the Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering program at Georgia Tech and served on the steering committee to develop Georgia Tech's interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Ocean Science & Engineering. Further, he served as co-PI on an NSF-supported Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) grant to train students in the physics, chemistry, and ecology of chemical and hydrodynamic signaling in aquatic communities. Finally, he served as PI for an NSF-supported Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grant to lead a cultural shift and re-imagine the Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering curriculum.
Distinctions & Awards
Publications