A lizard wearing one of the sensors, which weigh just three-hundredths of a gram each — the same as a two grains of rice. (Credit: Jon Suh)
Stroud will spend the next five years transforming Lizard Island into the world’s premier evolutionary observatory (Credit: Jon Suh)
James Stroud examines a lizard in the field. (Credit: Day’s Edge Productions)
James Stroud has been named a 2025 Packard Fellow for his pioneering research in evolutionary biology. Stroud, Elizabeth Smithgall-Watts Early Career Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, will receive $875,000 over five years to fund his work on “Lizard Island” in South Florida. His goal? To create evolution’s first high-definition map — with the help of 1,000 backpack-wearing lizards.
Awarded annually to just 20 individuals by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering support researchers pursuing cutting-edge research and ambitious goals. “These visionary Packard Fellows are pushing the boundaries of knowledge, and their bold ideas will become tomorrow’s real-world solutions,” says Nancy Lindborg, president and CEO of the Packard Foundation in a recent press release.
The flexible funding allows researchers to maximize their creativity and ingenuity. Stroud will spend the next five years transforming Lizard Island into the world’s premier evolutionary observatory, merging groundbreaking technology with long-term field research.
On Lizard Island, that means equipping every lizard with an ultra-lightweight sensor “backpack.” Although the sensors weigh just six-hundredths of a gram each — the same as two grains of rice — when combined with innovations in mapping technology, they will help Stroud investigate the role that behavior plays in driving evolution in the wild.
“I’m incredibly honored to be named a 2025 Packard Fellow,” says Stroud. “This support allows me to pursue a question that has fascinated evolutionary biologists for centuries: how does behavior shape evolution? It’s a transformative opportunity, and I’m deeply grateful to the Packard Foundation for believing in the potential of this work.”
Tiny sensors, big questions
Begun in 2015, Stroud’s work on Lizard Island is one of the longest-running evolutionary studies of its kind: for the last 10 years, he has carefully caught and released every lizard on the island, measuring evolution through documenting their body characteristics, habitat use, and survival.
Through his studies, he has captured evolution in action, but monitoring and measuring behavior in evolutionary studies has historically been an extremely difficult and elusive task. The problem? While smaller animals tend to have higher population densities and reproduce more quickly (making them ideal candidates for evolutionary field studies), it has been difficult to find durable and long-lasting sensors small enough for these animals to carry.
“This has been a missing link because behavior is a critical component of evolution,” Stroud says. “Behavior can both expose individuals to — or shield them from — natural selection. For example, an animal with a less favorable trait, like bad eyesight, could change its behavior to avoid situations where it is disadvantaged.
“These decisions can ultimately determine whether they survive and reproduce in the wild, directly influencing the outcome of natural selection. However, until now, we just haven’t had the technology to measure these types of extremely intricate behaviors across many individuals before.”
Mapping the future
Stroud won’t just know exactly where each lizard is — he’ll also create a detailed three-dimensional map of the entire island using remote sensing technology called LiDAR, updating it each year. “By shooting millions of laser beams, we can create a highly detailed three-dimensional map of Lizard Island, capturing the shape of every branch, rock, and blade of grass on the island,” he explains. “When connected to our lizard backpacks, we’ll know the exact microhabitats and resources available to each lizard as they move through this environment.”
Stroud will also deploy hundreds of microclimate sensors to understand how species are reacting to changes in temperature and climate. The result will be the world’s first comprehensive database: a record of minute lizard movements, the resources each individual uses, daily interactions, and changes in the environment spanning seasons and years.
“For evolutionary scientists, it has been seemingly impossible to track the moment-by-moment decisions of individual organisms… until now,” he says.
“Today, it’s possible to study what Darwin could only dream of — evolution occurring in real time,” Stroud adds. “Behavior is a critical component of evolution, understanding evolution is critical to understanding life on Earth, and understanding life on Earth is more important than ever.”
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Written by Selena Langner
The high impact between the metal balls in a ball mill reactor and the polymer surface is sufficient to momentarily liquefy the polymer and facilitate chemical reactions.
Kinga Gołąbek
Prof. Carsten Sievers
While plastics help enable modern standards of living, their accumulation in landfills and the overall environment continues to grow as a global concern.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the world’s most widely used plastics, with tens of millions of tons produced annually in the production of bottles, food packaging, and clothing fibers. The durability that makes PET so useful also means that it is more difficult to recycle efficiently.
Now, researchers have developed a method to break down PET using mechanical forces instead of heat or harsh chemicals. Published in the journal Chem, their findings demonstrate how a “mechanochemical” method — chemical reactions driven by mechanical forces such as collisions — can rapidly convert PET back into its basic building blocks, opening a path toward faster, cleaner recycling.
Led by postdoctoral researcher Kinga Gołąbek and Professor Carsten Sievers of Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the research team hit solid pieces of PET with metal balls with the same force they would experience in a machine called a ball mill. This can make the PET react with other solid chemicals such as sodium hydroxide (NaOH), generating enough energy to break the plastic’s chemical bonds at room temperature, without the need for hazardous solvents.
“We’re showing that mechanical impacts can help decompose plastics into their original molecules in a controllable and efficient way,” Sievers said. “This could transform the recycling of plastics into a more sustainable process.”
Mapping the Impact
In demonstrating the process, the researchers used controlled single-impact experiments along with advanced computer simulations to map how energy from collisions distributes across the plastic and triggers chemical and structural transformations.
These experiments showed changes in structure and chemistry of PET in tiny zones that experience different pressures and heat. By mapping these transformations, the team gained new insights into how mechanical energy can trigger rapid, efficient chemical reactions.
“This understanding could help engineers design industrial-scale recycling systems that are faster, cleaner, and more energy-efficient,” Gołąbek said.
Breaking Down Plastic
Each collision created a tiny crater, with the center absorbing the most energy. In this zone, the plastic stretched, cracked, and even softened slightly, creating ideal conditions for chemical reactions with sodium hydroxide.
High-resolution imaging and spectroscopy revealed that the normally ordered polymer chains became disordered in the crater center, while some chains broke into smaller fragments, increasing the surface area exposed to the reactant. Even without sodium hydroxide, mechanical impact alone caused minor chain breaking, showing that mechanical force itself can trigger chemical change.
The study also showed the importance of the amount of energy delivered by each impact. Low-energy collisions only slightly disturb PET, but stronger impacts cause cracks and plastic deformation, exposing new surfaces that can react with sodium hydroxide for rapid chemical breakdown.
“Understanding this energy threshold allows engineers to optimize mechanochemical recycling, maximizing efficiency while minimizing unnecessary energy use,” Sievers explained.
Closing the Loop on Plastic Waste
These findings point toward a future where plastics can be fully recycled back into their original building blocks, rather than being downcycled or discarded. By harnessing mechanical energy instead of heat or harsh chemicals, recycling could become faster, cleaner, and more energy-efficient.
“This approach could help close the loop on plastic waste,” Sievers said. “We could imagine recycling systems where everyday plastics are processed mechanochemically, giving waste new life repeatedly and reducing environmental impact.”
The team now plans to test real-world waste streams and explore whether similar methods can work for other difficult-to-recycle plastics, bringing mechanochemical recycling closer to industrial use.
“With millions of tons of PET produced every year, improving recycling efficiency could significantly reduce plastic pollution and help protect ecosystems worldwide,” Gołąbek said.
CITATION: Kinga Gołąbek, Yuchen Chang, Lauren R. Mellinger, Mariana V. Rodrigues, Cauê de Souza Coutinho Nogueira, Fabio B. Passos, Yutao Xing, Aline Ribeiro Passos, Mohammed H. Saffarini, Austin B. Isner, David S. Sholl, Carsten Sievers, “Spatially-resolved reaction environments in mechanochemical upcycling of polymers,” Chem, 2025.
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Brad Dixon, braddixon@gatech.edu
Flooding dominated the headlines of summer 2025. Atypical storms and rising rivers in the Texas Hill Country washed away an entire summer camp. Glacial snow melt, combined with flash river floods, caused hundreds of deaths in Pakistan. As the Atlantic hurricane season hits its peak, Americans wait to see if another storm may be as unexpectedly devastating as 2024’s Hurricane Helene.
Flooding can be an existential threat, affecting everything from infrastructure to health. Georgia Tech researchers are developing solutions to monitor and forecast flooding, as well as restore ecosystems to prevent future flooding. These efforts support communities’ resilience in the face of climate change and keep the U.S. secure.
The Saffir-Simpson scale classifies hurricanes solely by sustained wind speed, ranging from Category 1 to Category 5.
As climate change continues to reshape the intensity and behavior of hurricanes, meteorologists and researchers are examining whether the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, a decades-old classification system, still adequately communicates the full scope of hurricane hazards. While the scale remains a widely recognized tool, experts like Zachary Handlos, director of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Georgia Tech, suggest that a complementary system could enhance public understanding of the broader risks hurricanes pose.
Developed in 1969 by civil engineer and Georgia Tech alumnus Herbert Saffir, CE 1940, and meteorologist Robert Simpson, the scale classifies hurricanes solely by sustained wind speed, ranging from Category 1 to Category 5. It has long served as the primary tool for describing hurricane intensity in forecasts and media coverage.
“For anyone that follows hurricane coverage on TV, social media, the internet, or in any other form, the Saffir-Simpson scale is the way that hurricanes are described and classified,” said Handlos.
Toward a More Comprehensive Hazard Framework
Handlos noted that while the scale is widely recognized, it does not account for other major hazards such as storm surge, inland flooding, tornadoes, and storm size. “Maximum wind speeds are certainly a threat if one is in the path of a hurricane,” he said, “but several other hazards are also problematic.”
A new scale to complement the Saffir-Simpson scale could be beneficial. It would need to have accurate messaging about all aspects of a hurricane event while also continuing to record Saffir-Simpson scale data for comparison to past events.
Any effort to revise or supplement the scale would require broad collaboration across sectors. Handlos emphasized that input from government agencies, emergency managers, academic researchers, and private industry would be essential, and that formal adoption of any new system would likely involve coordination with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Hurricane Center.
He added, “If there is a way to update this scale or devise a new scale that both accounts for all types of hurricane hazards and is something that is digestible to the general public, this could be helpful in the future.”
Forecasting Advances and Communication Challenges
Climate change is not currently altering how hurricane strength is measured, but it is changing the conditions in which hurricanes form. Handlos said that with the observed increase in global average temperature over the past several decades, scientists also anticipate sea surface temperature values continuing to rise. This would result in the additional transfer of heat energy from the ocean’s surface to the atmosphere, further fueling hurricanes. It also provides the potential for hurricane development farther poleward in both hemispheres.
He also pointed to changes in atmospheric moisture. As air temperature rises, the atmosphere’s capacity to hold water vapor is expected to increase. One possible consequence of this is that any rainfall associated with hurricanes could be associated with higher rain rates and more total precipitation, which could intensify inland flooding.
Advances in forecasting technology are helping meteorologists improve how hurricane hazards are predicted and communicated. According to Handlos, the integration of traditional numerical weather prediction models with artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, alongside data from radar, satellites, weather balloons, and aircraft, has significantly enhanced the accuracy of hurricane forecasts over the past two decades.
Still, Handlos cautioned that effectively reaching the public remains a persistent challenge. “Despite repeated warnings and widespread messaging, we often hear stories of individuals choosing not to evacuate, because they’ve weathered previous storms without issue,” he said. “In today’s environment of nonstop social media, constant notifications, and information overload, people can struggle to identify which messages are most important and trustworthy.”
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Cover of the Sustainability Next Plan
The 2025 round of Sustainability Next Research Seed Grants has been awarded to 17 transdisciplinary research teams representing a vibrant network of 51 collaborators from across Georgia Tech. These teams span 21 unique units from six of the seven Colleges, including Schools, research centers, and Interdisciplinary Research Institutes.
The seed grant program, administered by the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS), reaches many faculty members from a diverse array of disciplines due to the generous support provided by broad-based partnerships in addition to the Sustainability Next funds. This year’s partners are the Georgia Tech Arts Initiative, BBISS, Walter H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Design, School of City and Regional Planning, School of Computer Science, Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, Energy Policy and Innovation Center, Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, Institute for Matter and Systems, Institute for People and Technology, Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Strategic Energy Institute, and Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education.
The goal of the program is to nurture promising research areas for future large-scale collaborative sustainability research, research translation, and/or high-impact outreach; to provide mid-career faculty with leadership and community-building opportunities; and to broaden and strengthen the Georgia Tech sustainability community as a whole. The call for proposals was modeled after the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research’s Moving Teams Forward and Forming Teams programs.
Looking ahead, BBISS will support and nurture these projects in collaboration with the relevant funding partners. Beginning in October, BBISS will host a series of focused workshops designed to foster collaboration and provide additional support to help advance these initiatives. Projects have been grouped into five thematic clusters, each of which will be the focus of an upcoming workshop:
- Circularity Programs
- Adaptation to the Changing Environment
- Community Engagement and Education
- Climate Science and Solutions
- Environmental and Health Impacts
BBISS faculty fellows, past seed grant recipients, and other interested Georgia Tech faculty are invited to participate. If you are interested in participating in the workshops, please email kristin.janacek@gatech.edu. The first session on Circularity Programs is Oct. 16 at 1 p.m. in the Peachtree Room (3rd floor) of the John Lewis Student Center.
The 2025 Sustainability Next Seed Grant awards are:
Forming Teams:
- Developing a Sustainable and Ethical Electric Vehicle Ecosystem Workforce for the Future Through Cross-Sector Partnerships. Principal Investigators (PI): Joe Bozeman. Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI): Jennifer Hirsch.
- Unlocking Circularity at Scale: Platform-Based Solutions for Advancing Material Reuse and Supply Chain Resilience. Principal Investigator: Marco Ceccagnoli. Co-PIs: Matthew Realff, Patricia Stathatou, Christos Athanasiou.
- OpenGUARD: Geospatial Utility Aggregations with Robust Differential Privacy. PI: Patrick Kastner. Co-PI: Juba Ziani.
- Regenerative Framework: A Transdisciplinary Model for Urban Climate Resilience and Soil Health. PI: Jenny McGuire. Co-PI: Nicole Kennard.
- Guiding Transportation With Community Action Through Research, Education, and Service (GT-CARES). PI: Rounaq Basu. Co-PIs: Ruthie Yow, Sofía Pérez-Guzmán, Rebecca Watts Hull.
- Co-optimizing Design and Coordination for Sustainable Multi-Robot Construction. PI: Edvard Bruun. Co-PI: Harish Ravichanda.
- Campus as Material Ecology: Building Transdisciplinary Circular Systems for Plastic Tracking, Transformation, and Community Engagement. PI: Hyojin Kwon. Co-PIs: Michael Best, Russ Clark, Tim Trent, Meisha Shofner.
- Sonifying Climate Infrastructures: Community Outreach and Education With Shade Synthesizer. PI: Heidi Biggs. Co-PIs: Clint Zeagler, Alexandria Smith.
- Building a Georgia Tech Research Partnership for Community-Based Food System Resilience. PI: Johannes Milz. Co-PIs: Xin Chen, Inge Rocker, Sofía Pérez-Guzmán, Nicole Kennard.
Moving Teams Forward:
- Are Data Centers the New Landfills? Social, Economic, and Environmental Tradeoffs. PI: Allen Hyde. Co-PIs: Josiah Hester, Cindy Lin, Nicole Kennard, Joe Bozeman, Elora Raymond, Tony Harding, Jung-Ho Lewe.
- Game-Based Learning in Energy Systems: A Rigorous Evaluation of Current Crisis. PI: Jessica Roberts. Co-PI: Daniel Molzahn.
- Strategic Application of Antibiotic-Independent Therapy to Treat Coral Disease Outbreaks. PI: Lauren Speare.
- Advancing Water Reuse Through Research, Education, and Community Partnerships in Atlanta, Georgia. PI: Katherine Graham. Co-PIs: Amanda Nolen, Yeqing Kong.
- Assessing the Accuracy and Reliability of Low-Cost Particulate Matter (PM) Sensors Across Diverse Ambient Environments. PI: Nga Lee (Sally) Ng. Co-PI: Ted Russell.
- Developing a Georgia Community Center Into a Sustainability Hub. PI: Ashutosh Dhekne, Co-PIs: Umakishore Ramachandran, Danielle Willkens, Ruthie Yow.
- What, When, Where of Air Pollution: PM2.5 and How It Impacts Health. PI: Shuichi Takayama. Co-PI: Nga Lee (Sally) Ng.
- Enabling Communities to Baseline the Performance of Energy Systems. PI: Jung-Ho Lewe. Co-PIs: Scott Duncan, David Solano Sarmiento, Danielle Willkens, Anna Tinoco-Santiago.
This round of funding was highly competitive, with 45 proposals submitted. BBISS extends its gratitude to all the individuals and groups who applied, as well as to the faculty and staff who contributed their time and expertise to evaluate the proposals. Their thoughtful input was essential to achieving a fair and collaborative selection process, ensuring that the awarded proposals align strongly with the BBISS’ strategy and show promise for long-term impact and future research opportunities.
According to BBISS Executive Director Beril Toktay, and Brady Family Chair in Management, “The high level of participation demonstrates the enduring commitment to sustainability research and engagement by the Georgia Tech community. BBISS honors this commitment by looking for collaboration opportunities with all who are driving sustainability efforts at Georgia Tech.”
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Brent Verrill, Research Communications Program Manager, BBISS
Collage of four images taken at the New York Climate Exchange 2025 events with Georgia Tech participants.
Beril Toktay, Regents’ Professor and Brady Family Chair, Scheller College of Business
Executive Director, Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems
Board of Directors, New York Climate Exchange
I returned from Climate Week NYC energized by what I witnessed: Georgia Tech faculty, students, and startups showcasing the breadth and depth of our climate innovation work on one of the world's biggest stages.
Climate Week NYC brings together more than 900 events, but what stood out wasn’t the scale — it was the substance. Across five New York Climate Exchange partner events, the Georgia Tech community demonstrated something essential. Georgia Tech bridges research and real-world impact where it matters most — in people’s lives.
At the Super South event, we flipped the script on where climate innovation happens and demonstrated the Southeast as a climate tech powerhouse. Too often, conversations about climate tech center on coastal hubs. But Georgia Tech-affiliated entrepreneurs Tarek Rakha (Lamarr.AI), Mya Love Griesbaum (Mycorrhiza Fashion), Joe Metzler (Metzev), Laura Stoy (Ph.D. ECE 2021, Rivalia Chemical), Charlie Cichetti (MGT 2004, Skema), Joseph Mooney (research engineer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, WattAir), Lewis Motion (MBA 2017, WEAV3D), and Ramtin Motahar (IE 2004, ECON 2004, M.S. AE 2017, Joulea) showed that the Southeast isn’t just participating in the clean energy transition — we’re leading it.
The Climate Tech Fellowship Showcase was personal. Seeing two Georgia Tech teams — Patricia Stathatou and Christos Athanasiou’s yeast-based water purification system, and Xiao Liu’s AI-powered wildfire management platform — selected for the inaugural cohort reminded me why partnerships like the New York Climate Exchange matter. These early-stage innovators need more than good ideas. They need networks, mentorship, and funding pathways. NYCE provides those connections.
From flooding to batteries, two symposia highlighted GT faculty doing research that matters. At Weathering the Future, Iris Tien joined experts from AECOM, NVIDIA, and the NYC Department of Environmental Protection to discuss integrating resilience into urban infrastructure. Her work on coastal adaptation and infrastructure resilience addresses real vulnerabilities that cities face today. The Global Battery Alliance Leadership Meeting and Urban Battery Forum brought Yuanzhi Tang into conversations about building sustainable, circular battery value chains. As EVs scale and stationary storage grows, how we manage battery lifecycles — from securing raw resources to manufacturing to second-life reuse/recycling — will determine how we balance electrification, sustainability, environmental considerations, and economics; more details can be found in the NYCE report on battery circularity co-authored by Wyatt Williams (M.S. CEE 2024, MBA 2024).
Nicole Kennard’s leadership in the Climate Storytelling Workshop reinforced something I believe deeply: Technical solutions alone won’t solve the climate crisis. We need approaches that center community voices, acknowledge environmental justice concerns, and build trust. This became particularly clear in Kennard’s lecture for NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress: "Food, Place, and Belonging: From Global Visions to Local Sustainability." Presented with Janelle Wright (M CP 2022) from the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, this lecture demonstrated how sustainable food systems can draw on global frameworks but must center community values and honor the history of place.
A few insights emerged from the week:
1. Geography matters — and so does bridging it. Collaborative platforms like NYCE that create genuine partnerships across regions will be more effective in achieving Georgia Tech’s vision of doing climate work that is grounded in Georgia and global in impact.
2. Visibility accelerates impact. Several faculty and entrepreneurs told me that Climate Week NYC opened doors — to investors, to funders, to partners, and to media. Platforms like NYCE amplify work that might otherwise stay local.
3. Students are passionate about climate opportunities. Every conversation about internships, fellowships, and experiential learning generated immediate interest. We need to build more pathways for students like Rohan Datta and Amanda Ehrenhalt to engage in climate work across both New York and Atlanta ecosystems — creating opportunities for hands-on experience, knowledge diffusion across regions, and the professional networks that will define their careers.
4. Our community extends far beyond campus. Meeting alumnus Alan Warren (PHYS 1978) drove this message home. Alan brings a unique vantage point on coastal resilience challenges faced in New York — and he’s energized by what our partnership can achieve. His offer to serve as Georgia Tech’s “envoy” in NYC, connecting our climate work to networks and opportunities there, is exactly the kind of volunteer leadership that accelerates impact. Alan’s own inspirational story of resilience and regeneration makes his commitment to climate resilience work even more meaningful.
Looking ahead, I see Georgia Tech’s partnership with the NYCE creating a powerful platform: NYCE amplifies our work through capital and convening; Georgia Tech anchors deployment with Southeast roots and global reach. Working alongside a distinguished board led by incoming chair Andrea Goldsmith, president of Stony Brook University, gives me confidence in this direction.
President Ángel Cabrera met with Goldsmith this week and reaffirmed our shared vision for bridging research and impact. “Georgia Tech’s mission has always been about translating knowledge into progress that serves society,” said Cabrera. “The New York Climate Exchange partnership exemplifies this commitment to innovative solutions that can be scaled to create real human impact. By connecting our strengths in community-engaged climate research with networks that can amplify and accelerate solutions, we’re living our motto of Progress and Service as we address one of humanity’s most urgent challenges.”
The Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) convenes faculty, students, and partners to address sustainability challenges through research, education, and collaboration. Connect with BBISS on LinkedIn to be part of the ongoing discussion and/or reach out to Susan Ryan (susan.ryan@gatech.edu) to be added to BBISS’ climate science and solutions community of practice.
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Brent Verrill, Research Communications Program Manager, BBISS
Winnie Chu
The Ross Archipelago near the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. (Credit: USGS)
Covering 98% of the continent and spanning more than 5.4 million square miles, the Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass on Earth. Georgia Tech’s Winnie Chu is going to map it.
Chu, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences has been awarded a $770,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create the first-ever comprehensive map of temperatures at the bottom of the ice sheet — a map that will span the entire Antarctic continent.
The NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program is a five-year grant designed to help promising researchers establish a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in their field. Known as CAREER awards, the grants are NSF’s most prestigious funding for early-career faculty.
In total, the Antarctic ice sheet holds enough water to raise global sea levels by over 200 feet — more than 50 feet higher than the top of Tech Tower. Climate models help predict how much of this ice may melt in the coming years, providing critical safety and planning information for coastal communities. However, researchers have limited knowledge of temperatures at the base of the ice sheet — miles beneath the surface — and these temperatures play a critical role in melting.
“Our research addresses this critical gap in Antarctic ice sheet modeling,” Chu explains. “If temperatures at the base are warm enough, the ice can melt and lubricate the interface.” The result? The surface acts like a slip-and-slide, carrying ice toward the ocean and accelerating melt.
“It is crucial that we can accurately predict this behavior,” Chu says. “This map will be an essential step forward in refining our climate models for the safety of coastal communities, for infrastructure planning, and for climate adaptation worldwide.”
Mapping miles-thick ice
The process isn’t as simple as measuring the temperature with a thermometer though. The Antarctic ice sheet is, on average, over a mile thick and can range up to three miles thick.
Chu, who leads the Polar Geophysical Simulation Lab at Georgia Tech, will combine 20 years of radar data — the result of multiple international polar programs — and leverage a technique called “radar sounding,” which analyzes the echoes of airborne radar measurements. The brightness and shape of the echoes can reveal clues about subglacial meltwater and temperatures. To complete the picture, Chu will use cutting-edge generative artificial intelligence (AI) models.
“Innovations in generative AI are part of what makes this research possible,” says Chu, “but the driving force is the data collected by these long-term research studies. AI can help complete the picture — but only because that data exists.”
Preparing for the future
Chu aims for the temperature map to improve the parameterization of climate models and ice sheet projections. This will enable better predictions of future melt and help scientists assess areas that may be particularly vulnerable.
She hopes that the map will drive further advances in polar science. “Our datasets and radar observations will be open access, meaning they’ll be available for all researchers to use,” Chu shares. “We’ll also be sharing the AI processing codes that we develop and the enhanced ice sheet model outputs.”
Additionally, the research will train the next generation of climate scientists through developing educational programs for high schoolers, empowering and engaging students nationwide with hands-on polar science and AI applications.
“This research is about more than just mapping Antarctica — it’s about building tools that help us prepare for the future,” Chu says. “By making our data and models openly available, and by engaging students in the science behind climate change, we’re not only advancing polar research — we’re empowering the next generation to carry it forward.”
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Written by Selena Langner
Rampi Ramprasad
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Professor & Regents’ Entrepreneur Rampi Ramprasad a $2 million grant to advance research at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and polymer science. He and a multidisciplinary team of Georgia Tech researchers will design next-generation polymer-based packaging materials that can easily be recycled or biodegraded at the end of their use. The project addresses one of the most pressing challenges in global sustainability: plastic waste.
Read more on the Georgia Tech Materials Science and Engineering Newspage
The general theme of the journal is the development and solution of problems that are adequately motivated to deal with important aspects of the design and/or analysis of transportation systems.
Srinivas Peeta, the Frederick R. Dickerson Chair in Transportation Systems at Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been appointed Co-Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Research Part B: Methodological. This prestigious journal focuses on the mathematical and analytical foundations of transportation systems, addressing critical challenges in areas such as traffic flow, network design, control and scheduling, optimization, queuing theory, logistics, and behavioral modeling.
Transportation Research Part B complements other journals in the series—Part A (Policy and Practice), Part C (Emerging Technologies), and Part D (Transport and Environment)—forming a comprehensive suite of publications that collectively represent the forefront of transportation science. The journal serves a diverse and specialized audience, including operations researchers, logisticians, economists, econometricians, mathematical modelers, transportation engineers, geographers, and planners.
Professor Peeta brings decades of experience to this role. His research spans dynamic traffic assignment, congestion mitigation, and the development of resilient transportation networks. His association with Transportation Research Part B began in the early 1990s as a reviewer, and he has since published approximately 25 papers in the journal. Since 2019, he has served as an Associate Editor, playing a key role in managing the editorial process and upholding the journal’s high standards.
Please join us in congratulating Professor Peeta for this well-earned recognition. We are confident he will continue to guide Transportation Research Part B with excellence and vision, shaping the future of transportation research.
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info@scl.gatech.edu
Agriculture is the largest cause of deforestation. So, it follows that forest expansion efforts would displace agriculture — but new research from Georgia Tech's School of Economics reports that that’s not necessarily the case. And not only that, forest expansion actually increased agricultural output in the study.
These findings can help governments, policymakers, and conservation organizations more accurately assess the costs and benefits of forest expansion projects in the fight against climate change.
“The key policy implication is that there may be co-benefits to using forest expansion as a tool to sequester carbon,” said Matthew E. Oliver, associate professor at the School of Economics and co-author on the paper. Without accounting for them, the net social benefits may be significantly underestimated, the researchers write.
The findings could also suggest alternative paths for aid organizations, Oliver said.
“Development programs don’t have to be in the form of direct aid. This project was about increasing forest areas, but it also supported the local economy in another indirect way.”
Main Findings
The paper, written by Oliver and Dylan Brewer at Georgia Tech and Vikrant K. Kamble at Muskingum University, was published in Land Economics. The project began as Kamble’s Ph.D. dissertation, on which Oliver and Brewer co-advised. They find:
- Following one of the largest forest expansion programs in Rajasthan, India, agricultural production in the area increased by 24% in the seven to 14 years after planting.
- The researchers hypothesize this could be due to increased pollinator activity in the newly forested areas and the 2% increase in rainfall they measured.
- While the 2% increase is statistically insignificant, yields for crops relying on rainfall grew considerably while yields for crops relying on irrigation did not, suggesting a connection between forest expansion, rainfall, and improved agricultural outputs.
This is some of the first evidence of its kind, and the researchers caution that the results may not hold true everywhere.
However, “our task was to rule out a negative impact on agriculture, and the fact that we're not seeing that and that there could be a positive impact is really strong evidence that we don't see a reverse trade-off,” Brewer said. “When you go back and reforest, it's not going to eat into agricultural resources.”
“Is There a Tradeoff between Forest Expansion and Agriculture?” was published in Land Economics in August 2025. Read more at https://doi.org/10.3368/le.101.3.022924-0020R
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Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts