George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

The Renewable Bioproducts Institute has announced its 2026 fellowship cohort, selecting 12 interdisciplinary research projects — including several led by Woodruff School faculty — that highlight growing collaboration and innovation in sustainable materials, packaging, fiber networks, and biomass-based technologies.

Woodruff School-affiliated projects include:

• Physics-Guided Learning of Mechanical Behavior in Forming-Stage Fiber Networks — Shuman Xia, Ting Zhu, John Xu
• Integrated Experimental-Computational-ML Framework for Accelerated Evaluation and Design of Biodegradable Barrier Coating for Paper-Based Packaging — Aditya Kumar, YuHang Hu, Danny Smyl
• Direct Method for Analysis of Fiber Orientation in Multiphase Forming — Suhas Jain, Cyrus Aidun
• Tailorable PLA-Alginate High-Performance Bio-Nanocomposites via Chitosan Cationic Bridging of Sargassum-Derived Alginate and Polylactic Acid (PLA) — Karl Jacob, Ingebourg Rocker, Kyriaki Kalaitzidou, Hamid Garmestani

https://bit.ly/4oppHtI

Georgia Tech alumnus and faculty member Tim Lieuwen, M.S. ME 1997, Ph.D. ME 1999, has donated his American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Medal — the society’s highest honor — to the Woodruff School. The $14,000 gold medal is displayed in the School Chair’s suite, where it serves as a symbol of excellence and achievement for students, faculty, and visitors.

Lieuwen, the executive vice president for Research and Regents’ Professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, received the ASME medal in 2025 in recognition of his pioneering contributions to combustion, clean energy, and the science of resilient energy systems.

Read more: https://bit.ly/4vc0qWr

Woodruff School staff members Jamya Amosun, Tayllor Hastings, Tiffany Johnson, and Joi Outlaw were part of the 2025-26 cohort of the Staff Opportunities to Accelerate Readiness (SOAR) Program. Launched in the spring of 2023 by the College of Engineering (CoE), SOAR is available to non-supervisory CoE staff and focuses on enhancing professional development through enrichment, education, and empowerment.

Amosun, Hastings, Johnson, and Outlaw took part in 12 monthly, 90-minute sessions aimed at both informing and inspiring—helping them build new skills, sharpen their professional vision, and prepare for the future. They completed the program in April.

Woodruff School graduate students were recognized at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Intersociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems (ITherm) 2026, held last month in Orlando, Florida.

Ph.D. student Mingeun Choi received the ITherm 2026 Prof. Avram Bar-Cohen Best Paper Award in the Emerging Technologies and Fundamentals Track for his work, “DeepONet-Enabled Fast and Scenario-Aware Spatial Temperature Prediction of a Vertical Power Delivery Module for Hyperscale Data Centers.” Ph.D. student Daksh Adhikari received the ITherm 2026 Best On-Site Poster Award in the System Level Thermal Management Track for his work, “Mitigation of Flow Boiling Instabilities via Active Flow Control.”

Frank H. Neely Professor Satish Kumar advises both students.

Congratulations to mechanical engineering majors Vincent Griffo and Sam Woolsey on being named 2026 Astronaut Scholars by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. 🚀

Matt McDowell, associate chair for research, Carter N. Paden, Jr. Distinguished Chair, and professor in the Woodruff School, was recently featured in an 11Alive news segment titled “Lithium-ion battery fires raise safety concerns.”

In the interview, he explains the risks of lithium-ion batteries, why they are widely used, and how travelers can handle them safely.

Watch the full segment ⬇️

Lithium-ion battery fires raise safety concerns Georgia Tech professor Matthew McDowell explains the risks of lithium-ion batteries, why they’re widely used, and how travelers can handle them safely.

One year after the opening of Pathway of Progress: Celebrating Georgia Tech Women, the newest honorees, including nuclear engineering alumna Margie Ann Morse, were selected for the permanent campus installation.

Morse is a pioneer in the field of nuclear engineering. She co-founded the engineering firm Parallax in 1992 and grew it into a multimillion-dollar nuclear logistics service company. She has remained involved with the Institute and served on the Georgia Tech Advisory Board.

https://bit.ly/43gSM0H

A new grant from the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) is backing an ambitious effort by Georgia Tech scientists to accelerate the development of human antibody therapies — a class of medicines that has transformed treatment across cancer, autoimmune disease, and infectious illness, yet it cannot be generated against many disease targets.

The $250,000 funding award, made through GRA’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship program, supports the translational work of Carl Ring Family Professor Ankur Singh and Regents’ Professor Andrés García. Singh and García are collaborating to develop functional human antibodies against some of the most difficult-to-treat diseases. While antibody therapies already benefit an estimated 20 million patients worldwide, fewer than 10 percent of discovery efforts ultimately yield candidates suitable for clinical use.

Read more: https://bit.ly/4x06Rxf

Graduate students in the Woodruff School were recognized this spring for reimagining how makerspaces can better support graduate education, research, and collaboration. Through a project-based competition tied to the Ph.D. teaching practicum class, students explored new models for graduate-centered makerspaces and earned honors as TechMade Graduate Makerspace Innovation Fellows and TechMade Graduate Makerspace Ambassadors.

Led by Andrei Fedorov, professor and associate chair for graduate studies and the Rae S. and Frank H. Neely Chair and Regents’ Entrepreneur, the competition challenged students to propose scalable, future-ready solutions for integrating makerspaces into large graduate programs, with a focus on reducing access barriers, strengthening peer-to-peer learning, and increasing research productivity.

The TechMade steering committee named Samuel Chen, Carolina Colón, and Talia Thomas TechMade Graduate Makerspace Innovation Fellows. In addition, the following students were recognized as TechMade Graduate Makerspace Ambassadors: Yang Chen, Shae Cole, Brian Epstein, Max Erpelding, Kaushik Godbole, Anthony Lim, Zihao Lin, Matt McCoy, Christian Molina-Mangual, Mayur Singh, James Wateska, and Guangxing Zhang.

Full story: https://bit.ly/3S7DxVk