energy

Georgia Tech to Launch State’s First Sustainability Master’s Program

admin — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 14:39:46 +0000

Georgia Tech to Launch State’s First Sustainability Master’s Program admin Wed, 06/18/2025 - 10:39

The Georgia Institute of Technology is launching a new Master of Science in Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management (MSEEM) — the only graduate degree in Georgia fully dedicated to sustainability issues.

The highly technical, science-based, and interdisciplinary program — approved by the Board of Regents on Feb. 12, 2019 — will prepare students to deliver fact-based policy expertise through robust analytical techniques and a deep understanding of energy and environmental issues and sustainability practices.

“This professionally focused degree will allow Georgia Tech to educate the next generation of sustainability leaders in corporate, government, and non-governmental organizations,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. “Georgia Tech is proud to deliver innovative, affordable, and top-quality education in high-demand areas such as sustainability to meet the needs of our evolving workforce."

When the program begins in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts' School of Public Policy in August 2019, MSEEM students will study topics such as sustainable energy and voluntary environmental commitments, cost-benefit analysis, utility regulation and policy, Earth systems, economics of environmental policy, big data and policy analytics, climate policy, and environmental management.

They also will learn analytical techniques used to estimate and evaluate sustainability metrics, be able to expertly assess the context of energy and environmental problems, and understand environmental ethics and its implications for sustainability practice.

The program will combine professional instruction from the nationally-ranked School of Public Policy with Georgia Tech’s top-notch engineering, business, and planning faculties to educate professionals who can lead organizations toward policies consistent with a sustainable future.

“This unique interdisciplinary program takes an innovative and integrative approach to sustainability that epitomizes the commitment of the School of Public Policy to collaborate across disciplines to educate future policy analysts and leaders and turn ideas into solutions to public problems,” said Kaye Husbands Fealing, professor and chair of the school.

Faculty will be drawn from across the Georgia Tech campus, including from the School of Public Policy, the Scheller College of Business, the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the School of City and Regional Planning.

Guest lecturers from Atlanta’s corporate community, government agencies, NGOs and research organizations also will participate — helping connect MSEEM students to the state of the practice and to job opportunities.

MSEEM students also will have access to Georgia Tech’s summer Program on Sustainable Development and Climate Change in Venice, Italy. The 5-week, 6-credit program features courses in climate policy and sustainable development and provides a multi-disciplinary learning experience that combines classroom lectures, guest speakers and instructional field trips.

“The world’s energy economy is undergoing transformational change, and as the public and private sectors strengthen their commitment to green practices, the need will increase for well-trained policy experts able to design, implement, and manage responses to sustainability issues. This program will provide such leaders,” said Marilyn A. Brown, Regents’ Professor and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy.

The MSEEM program is designed to serve a broad range of students interested in sustainability issues. Students can complete the degree on campus or online as a full-time student. Students also have the option to enroll part-time and complete their degree online. The program is designed to serve working professionals and others who want to participate part-time and earn their degree over several years.

In addition to the master’s degree, Georgia Tech is also offering a Certificate in Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management. This 12-credit hour SEEM Certificate can be completed in one or two semesters and can be earned on its own or in combination with the master’s degree.

Applications are being accepted through June 15 for the inaugural class of MSEEM students, who will begin study in August 2019.

A generous philanthropic gift has enabled Georgia Tech to offer five fully funded MSEEM fellowships to the program each year for the first three years of the program.

For more information on these programs, visit https://cepl.gatech.edu/mseem, or https://cepl.gatech.edu/cseem.

Summary sentence

The degree program will help educate the next generation of sustainability leaders for corporations, government, and non-governmental organizations.

Summary

The Georgia Institute of Technology is launching a new Master’s of Science in Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management (MSEEM) — the only graduate degree in Georgia fully dedicated to sustainability issues.

Athena Receives Prestigious Stanford Energy Postdoctoral Fellowship

dgivens8 — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 16:29:21 +0000

Athena Receives Prestigious Stanford Energy Postdoctoral Fellowship dgivens8 Wed, 03/20/2024 - 12:29

Georgia Institute of Technology School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. candidate Fabia Farlin Athena received the prestigious Stanford Energy Postdoctoral Fellowship, becoming Georgia Tech’s first recipient of the distinction.

With climate change becoming one of the a defining issue of the 21st century, the transition to a low-carbon energy system will solve about three-fourths of the problem, according to the fellowship’s website. At the same time, the new energy system needs to be affordable, reliable, and available to the average person.

The three-year fellowship sponsored in Stanford’s Precourt Institute of Energy and Doerr School of Sustainability aims to identify, develop, and connect the next generation of energy leaders — from science and engineering to policy and economics — to translate theoretical climate change solutions into tangible realities.

At Stanford, Athena, who is advised by Eric M. Vogel in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, will work on emerging materials and devices for energy-efficient sustainable computing. She will be working with H.-S. Philip Wong, professor of electrical engineering, and Alberto Salleo, professor of materials science and engineering.

After being selected as a finalist, she presented her current Ph.D. research on adaptive oxide devices for energy-efficient computing, as well as her proposed research to the fellowship’s advisory board.

“It was an amazing experience to go through the selection process of writing the proposal and finally getting interviewed by the honorable advisory board,” Athena said. “It was humbling to get the opportunity to discuss my research with a person I have always looked up to in Professor Steven Chu, a Nobel Laureate in Physics and former U.S. Secretary of Energy!”

Athena is just one of 10 fellows selected globally this year. The fellowship provides her the opportunity to explore new and profound postdoctoral research that is distinct from her Ph.D. work.

“I am deeply grateful to my advisor Prof. Eric M. Vogel for his constant kind support throughout my Ph.D. and for believing in me,” Athena said. “He has been a pillar of constant support throughout my journey. I am also grateful to Prof. Samuel Graham for his kind constant support, including for this fellowship. I am thankful to my respected P.I.s at Stanford, Professor H.-S. Philip Wong, and Professor Alberto Salleo for their support of my proposal. I am also grateful to my respected mentors Prof. Suman Datta, Prof. William Alan Doolittle, Dr. Takashi Ando, and Dr. Vijay Narayanan for their kind support, advice, and opportunities. Finally, I would like to thank Georgia Tech ECE for providing the platform for learning, exploration, and collaboration.”

Before her time at Georgia Tech, Athena received her undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. She then spent two semesters at Purdue University as a graduate researcher, where she collaborated with the Idaho National Lab on nuclear materials for next-generation energy.

Athena’s research has been recognized with the Georgia Tech ECE Ph.D. Fellowship, 2022 Cadence Diversity in Technology Scholarship, 2023 EECS Rising Stars, 2023 Colonel Oscar P. Cleaver Award for the most outstanding Ph.D. dissertation proposal in Georgia Tech ECE, 2023 MRS Graduate Student Award, and IBM Ph.D. Fellowship from 2022-2024.

Summary sentence

The ECE Ph.D. candidate will research emerging materials and devices for energy-efficient sustainable computing.

Summary

The ECE Ph.D. candidate will research emerging materials and devices for energy-efficient sustainable computing.

Dateline

Thu, 02/08/2024 - 12:00

zwiniecki3@gatech.edu

Contact

Zachary Winiecki

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Keywords

energy

Fellowship

sustainability

GTRI Works to Enhance EV Battery Reuse and Recycling in Georgia

admin — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 14:11:31 +0000

GTRI Works to Enhance EV Battery Reuse and Recycling in Georgia admin Fri, 06/09/2023 - 10:11

Amid the surge in demand for lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles (EVs), there is a greater need to properly recycle them. The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is working to optimize Georgia’s EV battery supply chain by developing cost- and energy-efficient methods to recover materials from spent batteries so that more of them can be reused – and pose fewer environmental risks.

Georgia is quickly emerging as a hub for the electronic transportation industry. According to data from the Georgia Department of Economic Development, since 2018, 35 EV-related projects have contributed $23 billion in investments in the state.

South Korea-based Hyundai Motor Group recently broke ground on its first fully dedicated EV manufacturing facility in Savannah’s Bryan County. The company has also teamed up with LG Energy Solution to invest $4.3 billion in building an EV battery cell manufacturing plant at the same location.

EV manufacturer and automotive technology company Rivian, which is based on Irvine, Calif., has announced a $5 billion investment in its second U.S. plant located east of Atlanta in Morgan and Walton Counties.

Hyundai’s new facility is expected to reach full production capacity at the end of 2025, with 30 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy anticipated to support the production of 300,000 EVs. Rivian, meanwhile, anticipates its Georgia plant will employ over 7,500 workers while producing up to 400,000 vehicles each year.

“This level of industry engagement in Georgia is unprecedented,” said Kevin Caravati, a GTRI principal research scientist, who is supporting this project. “The Hyundai plant, for example, could create tens of thousands of jobs in a very rural part of Georgia, which would be a step in the right direction for the entire state.”

The lithium-ion batteries that power EVs are seen as desirable over other battery technologies because of their high energy density, which allows electric cars to travel longer distances on a single charge. These types of batteries also have a low self-discharge rate, which means that the stored energy remains available for an extended period of time even when the vehicle is not in use.

However, these batteries can easily turn into fire hazards – especially at the end of their life cycle. Very few batteries ever end up being recycled and those that do get recycled are often mishandled.

“Currently, there are no recycling standards in place, which poses challenges for the entire supply chain,” said Milad Navaei, a GTRI senior research engineer, who is leading this project. “Our goal is to create circular economy for batteries in Georgia where we can reduce our dependence on raw materials that often come from overseas and can be very expensive.”

Lithium-ion batteries use metals including lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt that are mined in locations such as Africa’s Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chile and Argentina. During the production process, the metals are combined with other materials to form the two key components of a battery cell – the cathode and the anode. Inside a battery, the cathode, which has a negative charge, and anode, which has a positive charge, interact to generate electrons that power the electronic device. Most lithium-ion batteries are currently made in China.

Navaei noted that geopolitical sensitivities and lingering supply chain challenges in many of these regions makes GTRI’s work all the more crucial.

GTRI’s research consists of two parts: One, develop more advanced analytics capabilities for fleet management companies to monitor the health and performance of EV batteries, and two, optimize the recovery of raw materials from batteries at the end of their useful life.

“The battery is the most important part of an EV, and it’s critical to know the battery’s state of health (SoH), which is the ratio of the present capacity to the initial capacity,” said Navaei. “Our goal is to utilize technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) to monitor the SoH of these batteries and estimate the life cycle, which heavily depends on the usage and the type of battery for its safe and reliable implementation in the next life application.”

GTRI aims to integrate these technologies into companies’ existing inventory management systems to streamline process management and reporting.

For the second part of the research, GTRI is utilizing a statistical technique known as parametric modeling to aggregate data about known behaviors and characteristics of EV batteries to help companies make more informed decisions about properly depowering them and repurposing their raw materials with minimal environmental impact.

“Developing a robust system-modeling approach to support our energy research is a primary focus of ours,” said GTRI Principal Research Scientist Ilan Stern, who is also supporting the project. “Since our ultimate goal is to utilize domestic sources in our supply chain, really the only way to do that is by building out strong recycling models to account for the fact that these companies are working with finite materials and many of them are coming from conflict zones.”

GTRI is working with a number of industry partners on this project, including many companies that participated in Georgia Tech Battery Day earlier this year. At the event, over 230 energy researchers and industry participants convened to discuss emerging opportunities in energy storage research. Some of the companies represented at the event included Hyundai Kia, Delta Airlines, Cox Automotive and Panasonic.

Writer: Anna Akins
Photo Credit: iStock
GTRI Communications
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Atlanta, Georgia

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is the nonprofit, applied research division of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Founded in 1934 as the Engineering Experiment Station, GTRI has grown to more than 2,900 employees, supporting eight laboratories in over 20 locations around the country and performing more than $800 million of problem-solving research annually for government and industry. GTRI's renowned researchers combine science, engineering, economics, policy, and technical expertise to solve complex problems for the U.S. federal government, state, and industry.

Summary sentence

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is working to optimize Georgia’s EV battery supply chain by developing cost-and energy-efficient methods that pose fewer environmental risks.

Summary

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is working to optimize Georgia’s EV battery supply chain by developing cost- and energy-efficient methods to recover materials from spent batteries so that more of them can be reused – and pose fewer environmental risks.

Dateline

Wed, 06/07/2023 - 12:00

michelle.gowdy@gtri.gatech.edu

Contact

(Interim) Director of Communications

Michelle Gowdy

Michelle.Gowdy@gtri.gatech.edu

404-407-8060

Associated importer

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