Institute for People and Technology

Could the study of a Namibian beetle, which can use the ridges on its back to collect water from fog, lead scientists to a natural solution that could help replenish the world's limited supply of water? Professor Ashok Goel, the director of Georgia Tech's Design & Intelligence Laboratory and the co-director of the Center for Biologically Inspired Design, studies how these biological processes found in nature can offer scientists and engineers a viable solution to many of the complex problems facing our society today. To help explain biological concepts in a way that is useful and applicable to engineers and their projects, Goel and his team are developing an interactive, online repository—the Design by Analogy to Nature Engine (DANE)—that will serve as a dynamic and editable resource for both academics and industry.

Mark Guzdial, a Professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the inventor of the Media Computation approach to learning introductory computing, which uses contextualized computing education to attract and retain students. Mark is also the Director of the NSF-sponsored alliance to broaden participation in computing, "Georgia Computes!"

A leading expert in the field of interactive media, Professor Janet Murray is transforming the future of the viewing experience through research conducted in her Experimental Television Laboratory at Georgia Tech's Digital Media department.

Georgia Tech professor Ellen Zegura partners with the Carter Center in a new effort to promote and support mental health in post-civil war Liberia. As a part of the program, 2 cohorts of Liberian medical professionals a year participate in a rigorous 6-month training program to earn the equivalent of a master's degree in mental health care. In August 2011, the first set of 21 mental health specialists graduated from the program. Considering that at the start of the project Liberia had just one psychiatrist in the entire country and only three psychiatric nurses, the Mental Health Liberia project is a highly ambitious effort to build health provider capacity in the mental health area. Monitoring and evaluation of the efforts are a critical part of understanding what is working and documenting the extent of impact.

Georgia Tech's FutureMedia Fest 2010 explored media’s disruptive power on people and business.