Flavia Neto de Jesus, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist II in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research integrates pharmacology, vascular physiology, inflammation, and lymphatic bioengineering to investigate the mechanisms that regulate lymphatic vessel function in health and disease. Her current work focuses on lymphedema, ex vivo functional characterization of collecting lymphatic vessels, and the evaluation of pharmacological strategies to restore lymphatic pumping. She also has research experience in liver cancer and spaceflight-associated physiological alterations. She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of São Paulo and completed postdoctoral research training in Canada and the United States.

Jiachen Li is a Coca-Cola Foundation Early Career Professor and Assistant Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering (ME) at Georgia Tech. He leads the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Laboratory (TASL). Before joining Georgia Tech, he received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, followed by a Postdoctoral Scholar appointment at Stanford University. Dr. Li was recognized an RSS Robotics Pioneer and an ASME DSCD Rising Star. He currently serves as Co-Chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Learning and as an Associate Editor or Area Chair for more than ten leading journals and conferences. Professor Li’s research aims to enable trustworthy, interactive, and human-centered embodied intelligence that can perceive, understand, and reason about the physical world; safely interact and collaborate with humans; and effectively coordinate with other intelligent agents to benefit society in everyday life. Toward this vision, his group pursues interdisciplinary research that develops fundamental theories and practical algorithms at the intersection of robotics, trustworthy AI/ML, foundation models, reinforcement learning, computer vision, control, and optimization, with particularly focuses on safe robot learning, human-robot interaction, and multi-agent systems, with methods extensively validated on a wide range of real-world robotic platforms.

Education

• B.S., The University of Texas at Austin, 2019
• Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024

Professional Summary

Dr. Kelsey Anne Cavallaro is a research scientist with the McDowell Group in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on understanding the fundamental reaction mechanisms and structural evolution of next-generation materials for energy storage and conversion devices. Cavallaro's current projects focus on solid-state batteries, low-temperature batteries, and scale up of battery manufacturing. 

Dr. Aidun joined the Woodruff School as a Professor in 2003 after completion of a two-year period as program director at the National Science Foundation. He began at Tech in 1988 as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology. Prior, he was a research Scientist at Battelle Research Laboratories, Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell University and Senior Research Consultant at the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Center at Cornell. 

Dr. Aidun's research is at the intersection between fundamentals of the physics of complex fluids/thermal transport and applications to engineering and biotransport. He has a diverse research portfolio in fluid mechanics, bioengineering, renewable bioproducts and decarbonization of industrial processes. 

A major focus has been to understand the physics of blood cell transport and interaction with glycoproteins (e.g., vWF) with applications to cardiovascular diseases.

Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb joined Georgia Tech in summer 2007 as an assistant professor at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. Prior to this, she was a senior engineer in the materials and device R&D group of MEMS Research and Innovation Center at QUALCOMM MEMS Technologies, Inc. Her work included characterization and optimization of optical and electric response of IMOD displays and research on novel materials for improved processing and reliability of IMOD. Bassiri-Gharb's research interests are in smart and energy-related materials (e.g. ferroelectric and multiferroic materials) and their application to nano- and micro-electromechanical systems. Her research projects integrate novel micro and nanofabrication techniques and processes and study of the fundamental science of these materials at the nanoscale, at the interface of physical and electrochemical phenomena.

Dr. Alam joined the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering as an assistant professor in January 2026. His primary research interests include efficient algorithms and methods for AI-native engineering applications. His group, Inference Lab, focuses on foundational AI for engineering tasks, physics-integrated AI, and robot learning for unstructured manufacturing tasks. Before joining Georgia Tech, he was a postdoctoral associate at MIT. Dr. Alam has received several national and international awards including Google research scholar awards in Applied science in 2024, Ford Best Paper award at IDECTC 2025, SEIKM Best paper award at IDETC 2025, Best paper award at MSEC 2020.

Tony G. Chen is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech. His research focuses on designing mechanical intelligent mechanisms for various robotics applications. Mechanical intelligence focuses on developing mechanisms and robotic platforms that make challenges for perception, control, and autonomy easier or more robust for natural, unstructured, and often unpredictable environments by virtue of their physical designs. To achieve this design approach, two main and common methods are often deployed: rapid prototyping and bio-inspiration. Chen is especially interested in three major research application areas: (i) field robotics where designing new robotic mobility platforms or equipping existing platforms with capabilities of manipulation, (ii) manipulation tasks in home and industrial environments, and (iii) biomimetic robotics for biological study.

Maegan Lenertz is a Research Engineer at the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute with a background in Mechanical Engineering and Robotics. Maegan received her bachelor's in mechanical engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. Her research interests lie in robotics, hybrid and additive manufacturing, system programming, automation, and mechatronic design.