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‘Biochar’ Can Naturally Clean the Pollution that Rain Washes Off Georgia’s Roads

admin — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 17:12:51 +0000

‘Biochar’ Can Naturally Clean the Pollution that Rain Washes Off Georgia’s Roads admin Thu, 07/10/2025 - 13:12

A charcoal-like material made from leaves and branches that collect on forest floors could be a cheap, sustainable way to keep pollution from washing off roadways and into Georgia’s lakes and rivers.

Engineers at Georgia Tech and Georgia Southern University have found that this biological charcoal, or biochar, can be mixed with soil and used along roadways to catch grimy rainwater and filter it naturally before it pollutes surface water.

Their tests found the biochar effectively cleans contaminants from the rainwater and works just as well in the sandy soils of the coastal plain as in the clays of north Georgia. Their biochar-soil mixture can be easily substituted for expensive material mined from the earth that’s typically used on roads.

Though they focused on Georgia, the researchers said the findings could easily apply across the U.S., providing a simple, natural way to keep road pollutants out of water sources. They published their approach in the Journal of Environmental Management.

Learn about their system on the College of Engineering website.

Summary sentence

A new study shows how the material made from leaves and branches that collect on forest floors can be mixed with local soil to filter out road grime before it reaches waterways.

Summary

A new study shows how the material made from leaves and branches that collect on forest floors can be mixed with local soil to filter out road grime before it reaches waterways.

Dateline

Thu, 07/10/2025 - 12:00

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Thu, 07/10/2025 - 13:12

How the US Can Mine Its Own Critical Minerals — Without Digging New Holes

admin — Mon, 12 May 2025 13:16:41 +0000

How the US Can Mine Its Own Critical Minerals — Without Digging New Holes admin Mon, 05/12/2025 - 09:16

Every time you use your phone, open your computer or listen to your favorite music on AirPods, you are relying on critical minerals.

These materials are the tiny building blocks powering modern life. From lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite in batteries to gallium in telecommunication systems that enable constant connectivity, critical minerals act as the essential vitamins of modern technology: small in volume but vital to function.

Yet the U.S. depends heavily on imports for most critical materials. In 2024 the U.S. imported 80% of rare earth elements it used, 100% of gallium and natural graphite, and 48% to 76% of lithium, nickel and cobalt, to name a few.

Rising global demand, high import dependency and growing geopolitical tensions have made critical mineral supply an increasing national security concern − and one of the most urgent supply chain challenges of our time.

That raises a question: Could the U.S. mine and process more critical minerals at home?

As a geochemist who leads Georgia Tech’s Center for Critical Mineral Solutions and an engineer focused on energy innovation, we have been exploring the options and barriers for U.S. critical mineral production.

What’s Stopping Critical Minerals From Being Produced Domestically?

Let’s take a look at rare earth elements.

These elements are essential to modern technology, electric vehicles, energy systems and military applications. For example, neodymium is critical for making the strong magnets used in computer hard discs, lasers and wind turbines. Gadolinium is vital for MRI machines, while samarium and cerium play key roles in nuclear reactors and energy systems such as solar and wind power.

Despite their name, rare earth elements are actually not rare. Their concentrations in the Earth’s crust are comparable to more commonly mined metals such as zinc and copper.

However, rare earth elements do not often occur in easily accessible, economically viable mineral forms or high-grade deposits. As a result, identifying resources with sufficiently high concentration and large volume is crucial for enabling their economic production.

MP Materials’ Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility is in California near the Nevada border. Tmy350/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The U.S. currently has only two domestic rare earth mining locations: Georgia and California.

In southeast Georgia, rare earths are being produced as a byproduct of heavy mineral sand mining, but the produced rare earth concentrates are shipped out of state and then abroad for refining into the materials used in renewable energy technologies and permanent magnets.

The other location is in Mountain Pass, California, where hard rock mining extracts a rare earth carbonate mineral called bastnaesite. Yet again, much of the material is sent abroad for refining. As a result, the entire supply chain − from mining to final use in products − stretches across continents.

U.S. Geological Survey

Meeting the U.S. demand for rare earth elements and other critical minerals from operations within the United States will require more than just opening new mines. It will require developing and scaling up new technologies, as well as building processing operations.

Historically, processing has largely taken place overseas because of the environmental impacts, energy demand and regulatory constraints.

The Potential, But Long Road, to New Mines

Investment in exploration activity for critical minerals is rapidly increasing across the U.S.

In 2017 the U.S. Geological Survey launched the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative − known as Earth MRI − to identify potential sources of critical minerals within the country.

Some areas that appear promising for rare earth elements have lots of chemical weathering, in which rocks containing rare earth elements are broken down by reacting with water and air. Exploration is underway at several of these sites, including in locations in Wyoming and Montana.

A map shows focus areas for 23 mineral systems that could have critical mineral resources. USGS

Identifying a resource, however, is not the same as producing it.

Traditional mining can take a decade or two from exploration to production and up to 29 years in the U.S., the second-longest timeline in the world. Although this timeline could be changing under the current administration, companies might still face major uncertainties related to permitting, infrastructure development and, in some places, community opposition. Managing environmental impacts, such as air and water pollution and high water consumption and energy use, can further increase cost and extend project timelines.

Given that the exploration projects mentioned above are still in early stage, the U.S. needs additional, parallel efforts that can bring resources to the market at an accelerated pace.

Mining the Materials We Have Already Mined

One of the fastest ways to increase U.S. rare earth production may not require digging new holes in the ground − but rather returning to old ones.

The Atlantic coast region stands out on the Earth MRI map as a particularly promising area. What’s even better is that this region has already established extensive mining activities and mature infrastructure, which allows for much faster speed to market.

Georgia has mineral sand deposits that are rich in titanium, zirconium, and rare earth elements. Titanium and zirconium − both used in aerospace, energy and medical applications − are already mined in Florida and Georgia. In southeast Georgia, rare earth elements found with these heavy mineral sands are already being recovered as rare earth concentrates.

Kaolin mining near Macon, Ga.

Kaolin, a white clay used in paper, paint and porcelain, has been mined in Georgia for over a century, and it can also contain rare earth elements. Georgia generates more than 8 million tons of kaolin annually, making it the leading U.S. producer and a large exporter. This also comes with millions of tons of mining and processing residues, or what’s known as tailings.

Recent research studies suggest that there is significant potential for extracting rare earth elements in the tailings.

The tailings are already mined and sitting on the surface. There is no need to drill or blast. That means existing infrastructure, faster timelines and lower costs and than new mining operations.

Technological innovations, such as bioleaching, ligand-based extraction and separation and electrochemical separation, are now making mining these legacy wastes possible. New processing facilities could be built near existing kaolin or heavy mineral sand operations or former mine sites, bringing materials to market in a few years rather than decades.

The Future of Waste Mining

This approach is part of a broader strategy known as “waste mining,” “urban mining” or “mining the anthropogenic cycle.”

It involves the recovery of critical minerals from existing waste streams such as mine tailings, coal ash and industrial byproducts. It is also part of building a circular economy, where materials are reused and recycled rather than discarded.

The U.S. has the potential to catalyze new domestic supply chains for materials essential to national security and technology. Waste mining and recycling are critical pieces to ensure the long-term sustainability of these supply chains.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Summary sentence

Every time you use your phone, open your computer or listen to your favorite music on AirPods, you are relying on critical minerals.

Summary

Every time you use your phone, open your computer or listen to your favorite music on AirPods, you are relying on critical minerals.

Dateline

Tue, 05/06/2025 - 12:00

Contact

Author:

Yuanzhi Tang, Professor of Biogeochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology

Scott McWhorter, Distinguished Fellow in the Strategic Energy Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology

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shelley.wunder-smith@research.gatech.edu

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Mon, 05/12/2025 - 09:16

Georgia Tech EVPR Chaouki Abdallah Named President of Lebanese American University

admin — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 19:45:41 +0000

Georgia Tech EVPR Chaouki Abdallah Named President of Lebanese American University admin Tue, 06/25/2024 - 15:45

Chaouki Abdallah, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for Research (EVPR), has been named the new president of the Lebanese American University in Beirut.

Abdallah, MSECE 1982, Ph.D. ECE 1988, has served as EVPR since 2018; in this role, he led extraordinary growth in Georgia Tech’s research enterprise. Through the work of the Georgia Tech Research Institute, 10 interdisciplinary research institutes (IRIs) and a broad portfolio of faculty research, Georgia Tech now stands at No. 17 in the nation in research expenditures — and No. 1 among institutions without a medical school.

Additionally, Abdallah has also overseen Tech’s economic development activities through the Enterprise Innovation Institute and such groundbreaking entrepreneurship programs as CREATE-X, VentureLab, and the Advanced Technology Development Center.

Under Abdallah's strategic, thoughtful leadership, Georgia Tech strengthened its research partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities, launched the New York Climate Exchange with a focus on accelerating climate change solutions, established an AI Hub to boost research and commercialization in artificial intelligence, advanced biomedical research (including three research awards from ARPA-H), and elevated the Institute’s annual impact on Georgia’s economy to a record $4.5 billion.

Prior to Georgia Tech, Abdallah served as the 22nd president of the University of New Mexico (UNM), where he also had been provost, executive vice president of academic affairs, and chair of the electrical and computer engineering department. At UNM, he oversaw long-range academic planning, student success initiatives, and improvements in retention and graduation rates.

A national search will be conducted for Abdallah’s replacement. In the coming weeks, President Ángel Cabrera will name an interim EVPR.

Summary sentence

Abdallah will serve as LAU's 10th president.

Summary

Abdallah will serve as LAU's 10th president.

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Tue, 06/25/2024 - 12:00

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Tue, 06/25/2024 - 15:44

From Brewery to Biofilter: Making Yeast-Based Water Purification Possible

admin — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 20:30:02 +0000

From Brewery to Biofilter: Making Yeast-Based Water Purification Possible admin Mon, 06/10/2024 - 16:30

When looking for an environmentally friendly and cost-effective way to clean up contaminated water and soil, Georgia Tech researchers Patricia Stathatou and Christos Athanasiou turned to yeast. A cheap byproduct from fermentation processes — e.g., something your local brewery discards in mass quantities after making a batch of beer — yeast is widely known as an effective biosorbent. Biosorption is a mass transfer process by which an ion or molecule binds to inactive biological materials through physicochemical interactions.

When they initially studied this process, Stathatou and Athanasiou found that yeast can effectively and rapidly remove trace lead — at challenging initial concentrations below one part per million — from drinking water. Conventional water treatment methods either fail to eliminate lead at these low levels or result in high financial and environmental costs to do so. In a paper published today in RSC Sustainability, the researchers show how this process can be scaled.

“If you put yeast directly into water to clean it, you will need an additional treatment step to remove the yeast from the water afterward,” said Stathatou, a research scientist at the Renewable Bioproducts Institute and an incoming assistant professor at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “To implement this process at scale without requiring additional separation steps, the yeast cells need a housing.”

“Additionally, because yeast is abundant— in some cases, brewers even pay companies to haul it away as a waste byproduct — this process gives the yeast a second life,” said Athanasiou, an assistant professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering. “It’s a plentiful low, or even negative, value resource, making this purification process inexpensive and scalable.”

To develop a housing for the yeast, Stathatou and Athanasiou partnered with MIT chemical engineers Devashish Gokhale and Patrick S. Doyle. Gokhale and Stathatou are the lead authors of this new study that demonstrates the yeast water purification process’s scalability.

“We decided to make these hollow capsules— analogous to a multivitamin pill — but instead of filling them up with vitamins, we fill them up with yeast cells,” Gokhale said. “These capsules are porous, so the water can go into the capsules and the yeast are able to bind all of that lead, but the yeast themselves can’t escape into the water.”

The yeast-laden capsules are sufficiently large, about half a millimeter in diameter, for easy separation from water by gravity. This means they can be used to make packed-bed bioreactors or biofilters, with contaminated water flowing through these hydrogel-encased yeast cells and coming out clean.

Stathatou and Athanasiou envision using these hydrogel yeast capsules in small biofilters consumers can put on their kitchen faucets, or biofilters large enough to fit municipal or industrial wastewater treatment systems. But to enable such scalability, the yeast-laden capsules’ ability to withstand the force generated by water flowing inside such systems needed to be studied as well.

To determine this, Athanasiou tested the capsules’ mechanical robustness, which is how strong and sturdy they are in the presence of waterflow forces. He found they can withstand forces like those generated by water running from a faucet, or even flows like those in water treatment plants that serve a few hundred homes. “In previous attempts to scale up biosorption with similar approaches, lack of mechanical robustness has been a common cause of failure,” Athanasiou said. “We wanted to make sure our work addressed this issue from the very beginning to ensure scalability.”

“After assessing the mechanical robustness of the yeast-laden capsules, we made a prototype biofilter using a 10-ml syringe,” Stathatou explained. “The initial lead concentration of water entering the biofilter was 100 parts per billion; we demonstrated that the biofilter could treat the contaminated water, meeting EPA drinking water guidelines, while operating continuously for 12 days.”

The researchers hope to identify ways to isolate and collect specific contaminants left behind in the filtering yeast, so those too can be used for other purposes.

“Apart from lead, which is widely used in systems for energy generation and storage, this process could be used to remove and recover other metals and rare earth elements as well,” Athanasiou said. “This process could even be useful in space mining or other space applications.”

They also would like to find a way to keep reusing the yeast. “But even if we can’t reuse yeast indefinitely, it is biodegradable,” Stathatou noted. “It doesn’t need to be put into an industrial composter or sent to a landfill. It can be left on the ground, and the yeast will naturally decompose over time, contributing to nutrient cycling.”

This circular approach aims to reduce waste and environmental impact, while also creating economic opportunities in local communities. Despite numerous lead contamination incidents across the U.S., the team’s successful biosorption method notably could benefit low-income areas historically burdened by pollution and limited access to clean water, offering a cost-effective remediation solution. “We think there’s an interesting environmental justice aspect to this, especially when you start with something as low-cost and sustainable as yeast, which is essentially available anywhere,” Gokhale says.

Moving forward, Stathatou and Athanasiou are exploring other uses for their hydrogel-yeast purification method. The researchers are optimistic that, with modifications, this process can be used to remove additional inorganic and organic contaminants of emerging concern, such as PFAS — or “forever” chemicals — from the water or the ground.

Citation: Devashish Gokhale, Patritsia M. Stathatou, Christos E. Athanasiou, and Patrick S. Doyle, “Yeast-laden Hydrogel Capsules for Scalable Trace Lead Removal from Water,” RSC Sustainability. DOI:

Funding: Patricia Stathatou was supported by funding from the Renewable Bioproducts Institute at Georgia Tech. Devashish Gokhale was supported by the Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellowship for Water Solutions and the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS).

Summary sentence

A team of Georgia Tech and MIT researchers found that discarded brewer’s yeast, when encased in hydrogel capsules, becomes a viable and inexpensive method for purifying contaminated water.

Summary

Georgia Tech and MIT researchers have developed a novel water purification technique using hydrogel capsules filled with brewer’s yeast, a cost-effective biosorbent, to remove trace lead from contaminated water. Their study demonstrates this purification method's potential for large-scale application.

Dateline

Wed, 05/15/2024 - 12:00

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Shelley Wunder-Smith
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Georgia Institute of Technology

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Mon, 06/10/2024 - 16:29

Marilyn Brown Tapped as First Woman to Receive Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award

bwaye3 — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:39:17 +0000

Marilyn Brown Tapped as First Woman to Receive Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award bwaye3 Fri, 04/29/2022 - 12:39

Marilyn Brown is a world-leading expert on renewable energy and energy efficiency, a transformative intellectual thinker, and one of the founders of the field of energy and climate policy.

Her research has shaped energy policy in the U.S. and globally. Over the past two years, she has been tapped for several prestigious honors, including being elected to both the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, and receiving the 2021 World Citizen Prize in Environmental Performance. Now, she is the first woman to receive the Georgia Tech Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award in the 38 years of its existence. It is the highest honor given to a Georgia Tech professor. The award is presented to a professor who has made significant, long-term contributions to teaching, research, and public service.

Brown is the Regents and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy. She joined Georgia Tech after 22 years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she directed several national climate change mitigation studies and became a leader in the analysis and interpretation of energy futures.

At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, she was the joint highest-ranking female manager. Brown was attracted to Georgia Tech after working with a high-level group of scientists from Oak Ridge, the Imperial College of London, and Georgia Tech on a project involving next-generation energy, including advanced broadband. “I really liked the people from Tech who I worked with on the project,” said Brown. “They had a can-do attitude. At other universities, they might say, ‘That can’t be done.’ The people from Georgia Tech said, ‘We’ll find a way.’” In 2006, she was encouraged to apply for the position of — and was chosen as — a full professor in the School of Public Policy in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Throughout her career, Brown has been known for her transdisciplinary, action-based research and linking behavior to policy. “I started my career in the physical sciences at Rutgers. “From the beginning, I brought sciences into my work and have been quantitative. It has given me the ability to span sciences and related fields,” said Brown. “I tell my students they have to be quantitative in math and the physical sciences to be effective in energy.”

The focus of her research has been on the clean energy transition — bridging engineering, social and behavioral sciences, and policy studies to advance the design, adoption, and diffusion of clean energy technologies and policies. She is particularly interested in energy disparities and work to strengthen energy infrastructure, especially in areas of financial need. “It is all about the diffusion of innovation to the benefit of all,” she said.

Drawdown Georgia

Brown also leads the research program Drawdown Georgia, which she helped to create with the inspiration and funding of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation. Georgia Tech alumnus Ray C. Anderson was founder and chair of Interface Inc., and a pioneer in sustainability.

Drawdown Georgia was created and is being conducted in partnership with Emory University, the University of Georgia, and Georgia State University, as well as the Southface Institute, the Partnership for Southern Equity, and Greenlink Analytics.

Drawdown Georgia has identified a roadmap to significantly cut Georgia’s greenhouse gas emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. The Drawdown Georgia study, localized for Georgia’s urban and rural areas, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2021. The plan identified technology and practices that could resonate with individuals, towns, and corporations throughout the state, including ways to bring more clean energy resources and technologies to rural Georgia and help people use limited resources more efficiently.

Through collaboration with the Scheller College of Business, 25 Georgia CEOs from throughout the state agreed to join Drawdown Georgia. The project includes a dashboard of emissions by Georgia’s 159 counties, tracked monthly. The next step will be to track implementation of the 20 solutions in the plan, measuring investments by counties, and the use of electric vehicles, rooftop solar systems, alternative transportation, recycling, composting, afforestation, and silvopasture — the integration of trees and livestock operations on the same land.

Sustainability as a Way of Life

When asked what she wishes people knew about sustainability, Brown said, “Sustainable technologies and behaviors are not costly. They can be good for your pocketbook. Consider the home refrigerator. Twenty-five years ago, it consumed 2,000 kilowatt hours a year. Today it requires less than 600 kWh, and they don’t cost any more than they used to. People just have to be smart about what they choose and pay attention to cradle-to-grave resource issues.”

Brown also lives her values. At her home, she grows vegetables and composts, has rooftop solar, a Tesla Powerwall battery, and uses heat pumps for water heating, air conditioning, and heat. Her family has an energy focus. Her husband, Frank Southworth, is an adjunct professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Tech, and an accomplished transportation planner. Their daughter, Katie Southworth, is an attorney with Southface Energy Institute.

Working with Students

Brown created and co-leads the Climate and Energy Policy Lab in the School of Public Policy at Tech. She developed the Master of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management degree. She has advised 19 Ph.D. students, many of whom have gone on to leading roles in government agencies, academia, and industry.

She is known as an excellent mentor, communicator, and educator, inside and outside of the classroom. She challenges students to expand their knowledge and excel in their project work while developing their confidence and leadership skills. She has been described as generous with her time in providing students with guidance on professional development. As she was one of very few women in her field when she began her career, she has been purposeful about mentoring women.

Background

Brown earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Rutgers University, and a Master of Regional Planning degree from the University of Massachusetts. She holds a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in geography, with a minor in quantitative methods. Before joining Oak Ridge National Laboratory, she was an associate professor of geography at the University of Illinois, the first woman to earn tenure in geography there. Previously, she was a lecturer in the Department of Geography and Geology at Ohio Wesleyan University.

She has authored six books and more than 250 publications, and contributed to the United Nations 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize that year. Her work has had significant influence and visibility in the policy arena as evidenced by her impact on policies and programs, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program, and briefings and testimonies before state legislative and regulatory bodies, committees of both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and numerous international organizations.

Brown served two terms (2010-2017) as a presidential appointee and U.S. Senate-confirmed regulator on the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation’s largest public power provider. At TVA, she contributed to reducing TVA’s CO₂ emissions by 60% over a 15-year period. She also chaired for eight years the Nuclear Oversight Committee, which was responsible for bringing the most recent nuclear unit into commercial operation in the U.S., in 2016 at Watts Bar in Tennessee.

Reflecting her commitment to the role of demand-side management, Brown co-founded the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA), chaired its board of directors for several years, hired its first executive director, and provided SEEA’s first office space at Georgia Tech.

Quotes from Colleagues and Former Students

“In her work, she conceptualizes the coevolution of technology and society, with an emphasis on how to change unsustainable systems for the provision of energy, food, mobility, water and other areas. Rather than adhering to a narrow interpretation and application of geography and economics, her disciplinary background, she uses sociotechnical insights to inform her research and sheds light on the complex processes of societal transformation needed for addressing the climate and biodiversity crises as well as steep inequalities. In short, she draws on science to make extremely compelling, insightful, and even beautiful contributions to addressing contemporary challenges.”

Benjamin Sovacool
University Distinguished Professor of Business and Social Sciences – Aarhus University, Denmark
Professor of Energy Policy, Science Policy Research Unit – University of Sussex Business School, United Kingdom
Professor of Earth and Environment – Boston University, United States

“Dr. Brown’s contributions to the school and Institute extend beyond her own record to also include those of her students, who are excelling and driving important work both in and out of academia. Her students have founded startups in the explosive new climate tech field, lead energy and climate policy for major corporations like Google, work at multiple energy commissions at the state and federal level in regulatory staff roles, lead new areas of research in economics and policy in research centers across the world, and recently, one of her students was appointed as a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy. I don’t believe that it is a coincidence that this group of exceptional people all happened to emerge from the same lab at Georgia Tech. Dr. Brown played a formative role in helping develop the attitudes and thought processes that have enabled her students’ success and grown the influence of Georgia Tech around the globe.”

Matt Cox
CEO and Founder, Greenlink Analytics

“Marilyn challenges students to reflect on what can be done to show impact and relevance. She challenges students and collaborators to identify gaps in research that need to be addressed to advance science and discovery. Marilyn has had an exemplary career in teaching, research, and service, and her impact is significantly amplified by the hundreds of students and collaborators she has developed into the current and future generation of research and policy leaders and mentors.”

Melissa V. Lapsa
Building Technologies Program Manager
Energy Science and Technology Directorate
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

“Marilyn led by example as a Clean Energy and Education Empowerment (C3E) ambassador who sought to inspire the next generation of clean energy practitioners and researchers. I have always been impressed by the way Marilyn brought her intellectual acumen, strong moral compass, and sound judgement to bear on the deliberations and decision making with the wide range of different stakeholders involved in C3E. Moreover, Marilyn always made it a point to recognize the work of women researchers in academia and national laboratories in terms of the impact and importance of their contributions.”

Ellen Morris
Director, University Partnerships
NREL (a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy)

“The regularly scheduled Friday meetings of students and faculty at Dr. Brown’s direction were among the most innovative and rigorous discussions of clean energy policy and economic analysis anywhere.”

“Through both her body of work and numerous former students who work at or with the [Georgia Public Service Commission], she has a major indirect influence on the direction of utility regulation in this state and around the country.”

Benjamin H. Deitchman
Utility Analyst, Georgia Public Service Commission
Georgia Tech, Ph.D. in Public Policy, 2014

Summary sentence

Marilyn Brown is the 2022 recipient of the highest honor given to a Georgia Tech professor, the Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award.

Summary

Marilyn Brown, Regents and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy, is a world-leading expert on renewable energy and energy efficiency, a transformative intellectual thinker, and one of the founders of the field of energy and climate policy. Now, she is the first woman to receive the Georgia Tech Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award in the 38 years of its existence. It is the highest honor given to a Georgia Tech professor.

Dateline

Fri, 04/29/2022 - 12:00

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Atlanta, GA

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Fri, 04/29/2022 - 10:32

Agribusiness and Forest Product Innovations Among Projects Emphasized In NIFA Director Tour of Georgia Tech

bwaye3 — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 18:42:30 +0000

Agribusiness and Forest Product Innovations Among Projects Emphasized In NIFA Director Tour of Georgia Tech bwaye3 Tue, 02/15/2022 - 13:42

In January, Georgia Tech hosted Carrie Castille, director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), on campus to show Georgia Tech’s impact on food processing, agricultural, and forestry research.

NIFA, which operates within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was created in 2008 to further enhance the nation’s agricultural research and education. The agency works to address the agricultural issues affecting people’s daily lives and the nation’s future by partnering with other federal agencies, universities, and nonprofits. NIFA funds research and educational initiatives in order ensure the long-term viability of agriculture in the United States.

Agriculture and forestry are serious business here in the state of Georgia. According to the University of Georgia’s Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development, Georgia’s forest industry accounts for a total economic contribution to the state of $17.7 billion and supports more than 73,300 jobs in Georgia. Agriculture contributes approximately $73.3 billion annually to Georgia's economy and ranks No. 1 in the U.S. for broilers, hatching eggs, and peanuts. One in seven Georgians works in agriculture, forestry, or related fields. While Georgia Tech is not a land-grant university, Georgia Tech researchers work alongside university partners across the state, merging engineering and technology expertise with partners in traditional agricultural sciences.

Castille and her staff met with researchers at Georgia Tech’s Renewable Bioproducts Institute (RBI) along with GTRI’s Agricultural Technology Research Program (ATRP). RBI creates a competitive edge and insight into the future of forest products. Their professional scientists and engineers work together to provide information and offer solutions required by a rapidly changing market. GTRI’s ATRP is a state-funded research program meant to help Georgia’s agriculture economy and poultry industry. ATRP drives transformational innovation, developing new methods and systems specifically designed for poultry, agribusiness, and food manufacturing applications. These innovations are created to maximize productivity and efficiency, advance safety and health, and minimize environmental impacts. Their goal is to transition technologies from concept to commercialization, as quickly and economically as possible.

Summary sentence

Georgia Tech hosted director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA)

Dateline

Tue, 02/15/2022 - 12:00

wmeeks7@gatech.edu

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Blair Meeks
wmeeks7@gatech.edu
Assistant Vice President External Communications

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Atlanta, GA

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Tue, 02/15/2022 - 12:23

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‘Biochar’ Can Naturally Clean the Pollution that Rain Washes Off Georgia’s Roads

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How the US Can Mine Its Own Critical Minerals — Without Digging New Holes

What’s Stopping Critical Minerals From Being Produced Domestically?

The Potential, But Long Road, to New Mines

Mining the Materials We Have Already Mined

The Future of Waste Mining

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Georgia Tech EVPR Chaouki Abdallah Named President of Lebanese American University

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From Brewery to Biofilter: Making Yeast-Based Water Purification Possible

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Marilyn Brown Tapped as First Woman to Receive Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award

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Agribusiness and Forest Product Innovations Among Projects Emphasized In NIFA Director Tour of Georgia Tech

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