Georgia Institute of Technology VIP Program

North Ave NW
Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States
Website

Georgia Institute of Technology

North Ave NW
Atlanta, Georgia 30332
United States
Latitude: 33.775618
Longitude: -84.396285

The Institution

Georgia Institute of Technology is committed to improving the human condition through advanced science and technology. With more than 100 centers focused on interdisciplinary research, Georgia Tech consistently contributes vital research and innovation to American government, industry, and business. Georgia Tech provides a focused, technologically based education to both undergraduate and graduate students.

The Program

The VIP Program at Georgia Tech builds upon multidisciplinary and vertically integrated teams. The site has achieved high team longevity through the integration of VIP teams into instructors’ research, with teams making meaningful contributions to instructors’ research efforts. Program-level initiatives include retrospective analysis of peer evaluations to understand team dynamics, and to identify patterns across the program and areas for improvement; and development, documentation and dissemination of faculty professional development tools, workshops and resources. Georgia Tech spearheaded the establishment of the VIP Consortium, with the ultimate goal of transforming undergraduate education. As the lead organization, Georgia Tech seeks to continue expanding the consortium, to establish the organization as an independent body with active engagement between member institutions, and to cultivate a community of collaboration. As contributing members, Georgia Tech has developed the consortium webpage, is working to disseminate peer-evaluation tools, developing professional development tools, workshops and resources, and developing an online sharing portal for Consortium members.

Directors

Ed Coyle

Coordinators

Julie Sonnenberg-Klein
Chris Malbrue

VIP Teams

  • 2D Heterostructure Synthesis
    To develop 2-D to 2-D tunneling structures to enable for smaller, faster, more capable microelectronic devices applied to a broad range of applications such as energy, RF, and sensing.
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  • Active Safety for Autonomous and Semi-Autonomous Vehicles
    To develop a system that will be able to drive like an expert human driver. In order to achieve this, we will initially monitor the driving styles of several drivers using a high-fidelity driving simulator. Based on the measurements, we will be able to classify drivers according to their skill using graphical inference models. We will then develop suitable models for drivers’ actions and...
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  • Advanced Graphene Battery Technology
    For students to learn the theory and gain the skills necessary to fabricate next-gen batteries for EVs, spacecraft, and Smart Cities infrastructure.
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  • AquaBots
    The VIP Team will look at the challenging domain of Maritime Robotics. The oceans cover over 70% of our planet’s surface and constitute a critical element in our quality of life, including the climate and the resources and food that we obtain from the sea.  The goal of this team will be to address new research in maritime robotics including navigation of underwater and surface vehicles, mapping...
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  • Automated Alogrithm Design
    To develop a framework that fundamentally alters the development of algorithms. We desire to create an automated method that starts with the best human algorithms and then dispassionately develops hybrid algorithms that outperform existing methods. And then prove that these algorithms can also be studied by humans for inspiration in development of new algorithm and optimization methods....
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  • Automotive LIDAR
    To develop an automotive LiDAR system in support of the emerging technical area of vehicle autonomy and increased safety.
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  • BioBots
    To create autonomous microrobots that can traverse biological barriers within the body by mimicking microorganisms.
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  • Bio-inspired Network Dynamics and Geomechanics
    To predict soil and rock THCM behavior during heat and fluid injection and extraction, design new geomaterials to optimize the fuel cycle, and recommend strategies for resource and waste management. To build demonstration experimental set ups, to develop graphical media and to archive simulations ready for use in soil mechanics undergraduate course and geomechanics graduate courses.
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  • Collaborative Air, Sea, and Underwater Autonomous Vehicles

    This project aims to design, build, and test a team of air, sea, and underwater robots that will autonomously collaborate to complete tasks in the water.  Currently, the team has designed and built several vehicles (small surface boat, underwater vehicle, and quadcopter), and more will be created as the project grows. One goal is to use these robots to collectively complete obstacle...

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  • Concussion Connect
    To examine the problem of concussion from a multidisciplinary view that includes neuroscience, clinical assessment, sports engineering, health informatics, and societal issues.
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  • Curiosity-driven Frugal Science
    This VIP has two broad goals. First, to explore curiosity-driven scientific questions. Second, to strive to make science, technology, and healthcare accessible to billions of people by inventing frugal tools and techniques. These goals are not mutually exclusive; pursuit of one often leads to insights for the other.
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  • EcoCAR

    To stimulate the development of advanced vehicle technologies that reduce the overall impact of transportation on the environment by designing, building, and refining an alternative fuel and connected/autonomous vehicle that reduces energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and criteria tailpipe emissions while maintaining consumer acceptability, utility, and safety.

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  • Engineering for Social Innovation
    Use engineering design and development skills for solving social problems and meeting social needs. A collection of ongoing projects are selected from corporate and non-profit organizations. All projects aim to improve the lives of the under-privileged domestic population or people at the bottom of pyramid in the developing world. ESI team members can also propose projects that help...
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  • Exploratory Robotics
    To create, design, and test build jetpacks, robotic landing systems, exoskeletons, and autonomous vehicles to support exploration of extreme environments on Earth, the Moon, and Mars, with multi-disciplinary professionals, DARPA, and NASA scientists and engineers.
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  • Future Technology for Sports
    Explore the human technology frontier as it relates to technologies for sports spanning the continuum from the athlete to the fan.  Projects will include wearable technologies to empower athletes via advanced sensing and multi-modal real-time feedback via smart textiles, to immersive technologies (e.g. augmented and virtual reality ) to improve the fan experience in live sports venues and at...
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  • GT Mobile STEM Lab
    At Georgia Tech, we live in an incubator for problem solving, scientific inquiry, and technological innovation, but the public at large is surprisingly ignorant about the STEM disciplines. We will build the Georgia Tech Mobile STEM Laboratory – a sustainable and continually growing infrastructure we’ll use to measurably impact this ignorance regionally and nationally. Ultimately, we’ll have a...
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  • GT Motorsports
    To design, build, defend and race an open-wheel formula-style vehicle in the annual Formula SAE competition.
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  • GT Off-Road
    To design, build, defend and race a high-performance off-road vehicle in the annual SAE BAJA competition.
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  • GT Solar Racing
    To design and build a solar powered vehicle to compete in the Formula Sun Grand Prix, an endurance based track race, and the American Solar Challenge, a cross-country road race.
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  • GT USLI Rocket
    To challenge university-level students to design, build and launch a reusable rocket with a scientific or engineering payload to one mile above ground level, or AGL. The project engages students in scientific research and real-world engineering processes with NASA engineers.
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  • GTRI Agricultural Robotics
    Robotics has the potential to revolutionize inspection and harvesting tasks on commodity farms, i.e. corn, soybeans, and high-value specialty farms, i.e. fruits, nuts.  This is true from the standpoints of: labor, economics, early disease detection, and crop assessment. Specialty farms stand to benefit the most because their crops presently require a lot of manual labor to tend and to ensure...
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  • Hands-on Learning
    Develop a set of small, portable, and inexpensive experimental platforms and simple projects for teaching students fundamental engineering concepts and design principles.  These mini-systems would be used in classes as well as to enhance learning outside of the classroom, such as in the Invention Studio or with the IEEE Innovation Team. Typical courses supported include some from AE and ME such...
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  • HumaniTech
    To improve health outcomes, nutrition, and general living conditions in developing nations and resource-limited environments through a variety of key technologies. These solutions include: sensors for sanitation in challenging environments, improving access to healthcare through the development of low-cost technologies focusing primarily on child and maternal health, data analytics and human...
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  • Intelligent Digital Communication
    To enhance spectrum utilization, enable improved use of smart devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and create intelligent mechanisms for debugging, monitoring, policing and enhancing all types of wireless communications through the use of software defined radio techniques....
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  • IoT in Health

    Internet of things (IOT) has the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry. Thus far, most IOT applications focus on improving monitoring and physiological sensing of healthcare and patient care, however, the next generation of healthcare technologies will focus on multiplexed points of care testing, diagnostics, and treatment. The goal of this course is to engage students to...

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  • Lightning from the Edge of Space
    To build airborne observation platforms equipped with cameras and electromagnetic sensors, to observe lightning and other electrical activity in the atmosphere from high altitude (100,000 ft). We have already launched and retrieved a balloon with camera payload (see picture) in our first year. See pictures of the launch and one taken mid-flight, from above 100,000 ft you are above the sky and...
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  • Living Dynamical Systems
    To discover physical principles of how animals move in complex, challenging environments. Use tools from physics, neuroscience, biomechanics and robotics to extract mechanism of how animal and engineered systems move especially with respect to stability, agility, and robustness.
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  • M.A.R.S.
    NASA, Georgia Tech and GTRI are developing energy technologies to support future missions to Mars. The VIP M.A.R.S. Team will research, develop and test renewable energy systems in collaboration with scientists and engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Moon and Mars offer difficult challenges to NASA’s ambitious plan for exploration, including acquisition of reliable and...
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  • Retrofuturistic Hardware
    Modern electronic devices are powerful, but uninspiring; they are ubiquitous, but ephemeral. We will design and fabricate devices for music production, gaming, and computing sparked by real-world designs from the past as well as fictional formulations of imagined futures. The black-and-white, utilitarian minimalism of modern laptops and cell phones that blight the aisles of Best Buy with...
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  • RoboSense
    To develop robotic boats as sensing platforms for environmental monitoring tasks such as oil spill survey and cleaning, and metal objects in the sediments. To develop autonomy solutions for maritime mobile sensing networks.
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  • Robotic Human Augmentation
    The EPIC (Exoskeleton and Prosthesis Intelligent Controls) Lab research areas include automation and mechatronics and bioengineering with a focus on the control of powered robotic prostheses and exoskeletons to assist human movement. We implement biological signal processing, intent recognition, and control systems based on EMG and mechanical sensors to improve human-machine capabilities. Our...
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  • Robotic Musicianship
    Develop creative robots that can listen to, play and improvise music
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  • Smart and Connected Bioelectronics
    To study soft, biocompatible materials to design low-profile, unobtrusive wearable and implantable electronics for advancing human healthcare and wellness.
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  • Smart City Infrastructure
    To develop smart city infrastructure health condition monitoring, detection and diagnosis with the use of emerging technologies (e.g. smart phones, 2D imaging, 3D laser, LiDAR, UAV, GPS/GIS, crowdsourcing, voice recognition, etc.) with artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, pattern recognition, signal processing, and multi-source/scale/frequency/resolution data fusion, and...
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  • Subsurface Energy
    Energy has become one of the world's biggest engineering challenges. Current carbon-based energy supply faces conventional reserves depletion and climatic hurdles. The goal of this project is to address enhanced subsurface energy recovery and associated environmental mitigation from a geoengineering perspective. The team will study fundamental hydro-thermo-chemo-bio-mechanical properties of...
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  • Chip Scale Power and Energy
    Due to ITAR and other access restrictions this project is limited to US citizens only. To develop nanostructured chip-scale power and energy storage devices for use in miniaturized sensing, communication and energy harvesting devices.
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Methods and Technologies

Majors

Grand Challenges