Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Vol. 82, No. 04 2006

Spring 2006

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fit is an honor to provide students with the opportunities that Tech provided me by supporting the President's Scholarship Program."

David A. Bottoms, MGT 2001, and Brittney Wright Bottoms of Marietta, Georgia • Born a Georgia Tech fan thanks to his father, Gary T. Bottoms, IM 1975 • Grew up in Marietta A\U\ graduated from The Walker School • President's Scholar at Georgia Tech • As a student, involved in the Ambassadors Program, Student foundation Board of Trustees, and ODK • Chair-elect of the Young Alumni Council of the Alumni Association; on the Board of Alexander-Tharpe Fund's 1st and 10 Program • Employee benefits consultant with UnumProvident Corporation • Married to Brittney Wright Bottoms (Kennesaw State University), former member of the U.S. Figure Skating Team; member of the Board of Directors for U.S. Figure Skating

Philanthropy at Georgia Tech • With outright and matching gifts, established the David A. Bottoms Endowment Fund to support President's Scholars • Bequest under his will for the David A. Bottoms Endowment Fund • Roll Call supporter • Alexander-Tharpe Fund contributor • Georgia Tech's youngest Founders' Council member

Thoughts on Giving to Georgia Tech: "I was privileged to be a President's Scholar at Tech, and therefore I benefited greatly from the generosity of others. It is an honor to provide students with the opportunities that Tech provided me by supporting the President's Scholarship Program through outright lifetime gifts and with a provision under my w i l l . "

David A. Bottoms is the youngest of Founders' Council's 874 members who have made bequests or life income gifts of $25,000 or more in support of Georgia Tech's future.

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For more information on leaving a legacy at Georgia Tech through a bequest or life-income gift, please contact: Office of Development • Planned Giving • Atlanta GA 30332-0220 • or call (404) 894-4678

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a;.: VOLUME 82, NUMBER 4

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Cover Story

Poultry Portraiture

The Brain Trust

Frank Norton Jr., BC 79, below right, produces works of Chick'in Scratch, often caricatures of people as poultry, to relieve the stress brought on by running the W.L Norton Agency, a real estate and insurance company based in Gainesville, Ga., with 300 employees in nine offices.

Nineteen of the Georgia Research Alliance's eminent scholars — including Provost Jean-Lou Chameau, cover — work at Georgia Tech, where they develop new technologies that in turn bolster the economy. The newest scholar, Jeffrey Skolnick, says Tech's collaborative environment gives it a competitive edge in scientific discovery and the leveraging of resources "make research realistic."

Taking Earth's Temperature Five Georgia Tech researchers are using data collected from a NASA satellite to study Earth's atmospheric health.

Poetic License Bruce McEver, IE 66, endowed a chair in poetry "to enrich the lives and education of Tech students." Not long after Thomas Lux appeared on campus, a second poetry chair was established. "There are maybe only 25 or 30 poetry chairs in the whole country," Lux says. "I don't know of any other college or university that has two of them."

Cover Photo: Billy Howard

[rm?2006PREVpy Viewpoint Expanding Potential

Tech Notes

Pacesetter

A $20 million gift and new management dean highlight our report on life on campus.

Dan Albritton: Planet Protector

Readers write

Pacesetter Palace Stepps: Flying High

InQuotes

12 InFocus Radakovich New Athletics Director Critical Connections

Efficient Chemistry Optical-Wireless Convergence

Alumni Almanac

Feedback

Comments in the media from the Tech community

61

Research Reviews

In the spring of 1931, Bobby Dodd joined the coaching staff. Fifty years later, John Young soared into space.

Interview Joseph Hughes analyzes New Orleans' current predicament and examines the city's future.

Pacesetter David Rudolph: Entertainment Transfer

Faculty Profile Pacesetter Krishna Bharat: Google News Maker

Peter Ludovice: Dr. Ludicrous

Photo Finish Improvisational Robot

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

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'airway #9 Echelon, Home of the Georgia Tech Club, will be a community of elegant homes in an atmosphere of comfortable camaraderie and the exclusive benefits of a private club. Nestled on 610 acres of wooded, rolling hills and lakes, you might feel like you're living at a secluded, private estate. The Georgia 400 area, with its technology corridor, exemplary shopping, restaurants, services, and quick access to Atlanta, is just minutes away. Echelon residents will enjoy living in a low density community of only 230 homesites at least one acre in size.

The Georgia Tech Club is destined to become one of the finest private clubs in the state of Georgia, it will feature a championship Rees Jones golf course, an approx. 25,000 sq, ft. clubhouse, fitness and swim center, Stan Smith designed tennis facility and state-of-the art Golf Learning Center, home of the Georgia Tech NCAA men's golf team. The golf course is currently under construction and will open the Spring of 2006 ATLANTA'S HIGH

COUNTRY

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404-240-7225

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E C H E L O H LAKE, F O R E S T A N D M O U N T A I N VIEW ESTATE H O M E S FROM $ 9 0 0 s T O OVER $3 M I L L I O N HOMESITES FROM $200s TO $500s Directions; GA 400 north to Windward Parkway (exit 11), (west) on Windward Parkway (becomes Cogburn Road, then Hopewell).

Left on Birmingham Road and right on Birmingham Highway. Travel 1.6 miles to Welcome Center on right.

Call today to schedule a tour.

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Georgia Tech Alumni A s s o c i a t i o n Joseph P. Irwin, IM 80, Publisher John C. Dunn, Editor Kimberly Link-Wills, Managing Editor Neil B. McGahee, Senior Editor Leslie Overman, Editorial Assistant Gary Goettling, Contributing Editor Everett Hullum, Design

Alumni Association Executive Committee J. William Goodhew III, IM 61 Chairman Carey H. Brown, IE 69 Past Chairman Janice N. Wittschiebe, Arch 78, M Arch 80 Chairman Elect[Treasurer C. Meade Sutterfield, EE 72 Vice Chairman Activities William J. Todd, IM 71 Vice Chairman Roll Call Walter G. Ehmer, IE 89 Al Trujillo, AE 81 Joseph P. Irwin, IM 80 President

Advertising Jim Shea (404)894-0764 • E-mail: jim.shea@alumni.gatech.edu

GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI MAGAZINE (ISSN: 1061-9747) is published quarterly (Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring) for contributors to the annual Roll Call of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association, 190 North Ave. NW, Atlanta, GA 30313.

Georgia Tech Alumni Association allocates $10 from a contribution toward a year's subscription to its magazine.

Periodical postage paid at Atlanta, GA and additional mailing offices. © 2006 Georgia Tech Alumni Association Main Number (404) 894-2391.

Expanding Potential Georgia Tech is growing in a lot of ways and that's a good thing. The vision is for the Institute to define the technological university of the 21st century. This is a bold vision that calls for new ways of thinking about the mission.

One of the strategies being deployed by the leadership team is to expand our reputation globally through a series of initiatives aimed at positing Tech as a university with global reach. And this can provide terrific returns in the future. Recently I visited our Georgia Tech Lorraine campus in Metz, France. I met with some of the faculty there and also attended an alumni event in Paris where we had more than 100 alumni and friends of Tech.

One theme is quite obvious for the future — collaboration with others. It's an imperative and it's been showing results in Metz for the 15 years that Georgia Tech Lorraine has existed.

At our "Georgia Tech: Innovating Here and Now" symposium in March, an alumna from the audience questioned our faculty presenters about what makes Georgia Tech successful today. All three of them said it was collaboration.

We're breaking down the barriers — internally across the disciplines, nationally like our work with Emory in bioengineering and biomedicine and internationally like our campus in Metz, our work in Singapore, our joint degree programs with Shanghai Jiao Tong. These efforts will enable us to provide our students with not only a globalized education but it will also make the value of your Tech degree rise more than ever. And that's a benefit that pays dividends over your lifetime.

MP Joseph P. Irwin, President

Postmaster: Send address changes to GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI MAGAZINE,

190 North Ave. NW, Atlanta, GA 30313.

Editorial phone (404) 894-0750/0760.

Fax (404) 385-4637.

E-mail: editor@alumni.gatech.edu; gtalumni.org.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

The Global Learning & Conference Center is the perfect home for corporate and association meetings, business retreats, educational seminars and training and development needs.

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FEEDBACK<<< Aquarium Accolade

with family and friends. He brings honor to our family and as his parents, we are very proud of his career in music.

The GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI

MAGAZINE (Winter) had a fine article about the Georgia Aquarium and its executive director, Jeff Swanagan. What commendable work he is doing and what an outstanding choice he is for that assignment.

One of our sons spent some time with Jeff when he was working at Zoo Atlanta a number of years ago. Our other son, who is in Frankfurt, Germany, was here when we visited the aquarium. Jeff spent some time with us, which made us appreciate the aquarium even more. It's good to know he's a Georgia Tech man.

Delia Graham, wife of Stewart Graham, IM 50 Dunwoody, Ga.

Reagan as Rick?

I read the article "Here's Looking at You, 'Casablanca'"

by Janet Murray. Here's some related information I found interesting that is taken from the book "They Did What?" by Bob Fenster.

As I'm sure everyone

knows, many actors turn down roles in films that later turn out to be extremely successful.

"Casablanca" is one of them.

Originally, the male lead was to have been played not by Humphrey Bogart but by, believe it or not, Ronald Reagan. Also, Hedy Lamarr turned down the lead female role.

One wonders how successful the film would have been if the original choices had played the leads.

Blade Chapman, CE 65 Derwood, Md.

Calming Influence I received the ALUMNI MAGAZINE

and will enjoy sharing it and the article "Composer's Music Calms the Soul" — about our oldest son, Stanton Lanier —

Tech is a place that he loves and it was a great influence. As parents, we were extremely pleased with the cordial welcome and care he received when we took him there as a freshman. The results of his studies and accomplishments during his four years at Tech also were quite satisfying.

The magazine continues to bring the best to students and alumni of your great institution — and that comes from a loyal Georgia Bulldog.

Mary B. Lanier Clarksville, Ga.

Fond Memories I want to congratulate you for the outstanding Winter issue of the GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI

MAGAZINE. Several articles stirred fond memories for me of my arrival at Tech in the fall of 1944. The new president, Blake Van Leer, arrived there shortly before I checked in and made a lasting impression on all of us.

And now his signature is on the bottom right corner of my diploma.

We had an influx of students from Cuba that fall. They were all good students and made friends with the rest of us quickly. Most of them had never seen snow before. On the first accumulation that winter, they took great delight in making snowballs and bringing them into Brown dormitory to show them to us. Attempts to make snowmen, however, ended in dismal failure.

The movies "Casablanca" and "Gone With the Wind" were our favorites and we all memorized most of the lines of the star actors. Congratulations to Professor Murray on her work on the digital edition of "Casablanca."

Your article on the new aquarium is great and we hope to visit it soon.

Keep up the good work.

Bruno Damioli, ME 48 Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

We Welcome Mail The ALUMNI MAGAZINE welcomes

letters. Please include your full name, address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for clarity, space and content.

Mail/e-mail to: Georgia Tech Alumni Publications 190 North Ave. NW Atlanta, GA 30313 Fax: (404) 385-4637 editor@alumni.gatech.edu

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

>>>

UOTES

I'm a native Southerner and I don't think that the South or even the traditional Evangelical Christian Southerners are as monolithic as some people — perhaps some political operatives in Washington — may think, especially when they are given other information. Our students tend to self-identify as rather conservative, rather Republican. None of them said they were in favor of weakening environmental regulations.

And a strong majority said they were in favor of strengthening regulations, including some students who put themselves out on the far tail of ideology and partisanship.

done cheaper or is easily commoditized is going to be at risk from a job standpoint, what do you do to educate people in information technology? You have to educate them in areas that are going to

— Richard Barke associate dean of the Ivan Allen College, on a survey of students' attitudes on a range of issues, including environmental stewardship, in the Christian Science Monitor

Georgia Tech has a reputation of producing bench engineers. That's what computer science is. [But] if it's really the case that anything that can be automated or

8

G e o r g i a T e c h Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

continue to add value, even as low-level jobs go offshore or get automated away.

— Rich DeMillo dean of the College of Computing, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

People need help getting balance in their lives, whether it means doing sports, playing the guitar or eating junk food. I don't think those are any different than playing these games too much.

— Amy Bruckman associate professor in the College of Computing, who has studied multiuser online gaming since the 1990s, on azcentral.com

Although most companies start out with a strong focus on customers, as the organization grows beyond a dozen members, people may stop looking outward and become preoccupied with internal processes.

— Craig Cochran regional manager of Georgia Tech's Office of Economic Development and Technology Ventures, on Forbes.com

They weren't doing work.

— Jonathan Clarke assistant finance professor, who discovered that students using laptop computers his class were "surfing the Web, checking e-mail, instant messaging," in The Wall Street Journal

I said, Td take it.'

I'm in the running for two incredible positions.

— Dan Papp former executive assistant to the president at Georgia Tech, who was named president of Kennesaw State University on Feb. 16.

A candidate for two positions simultaneously — chancellor of the University System of Georgia and the Kennesaw presidency — he was asked by a member of the Kennesaw search committee what he would do if he were offered the job "right now," in the Atlanta JournalConstitution

Shame on them. They'll try to feed you anything if you'll eat it.

— Chuck Mulford Georgia Tech accounting professor, concerning an emerging trend in pro forma reporting by some companies that are backing out all charges for stock-based compensation, even for restricted stock, from their pro forma earnings, on CF0.com

If I were graduating from Georgia Tech today, I would want to work in the space business because that is where some of the most exciting action will be in the coming decades.

— Michael D. Griffin NASA administrator and fall commencement speaker at Georgia Tech, in the Washington Times

There is this critical need for the game designers of the future to be broadly educated in the liberal arts. It's not surprising that several people working in game design at higher levels hold degrees in film.

— Janet Murray professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture, in the Christian Science Monitor

Coca-Cola and Atlanta have grown up together. It's impossible to imagine Atlanta without Coca-Cola.

— Sam A. Williams, EE 69 president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, in the Los Angeles Times, on Atlanta naming its downtown entertainment complex — home to the Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola — Pemberton Place, in honor of Coke inventor John S. Pemberton

That's where the fun is — using a lot of old technology to do some really cool stuff.

— Bryan A. Legates, MS EE 93 design manager at Linear Technology Corp., Milpitas, Calif., describing the oldfashioned work of an analog engineer putting real-world information into digital form in the Mercury News in San Jose, Calif.

The plasma torch can be used to melt existing landfills by 90 percent. It is cleaner than coal-fired plants and it doesn't operate like an incinerator. • — Louis Circeo principal research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, in Asianweek.com, which reported that Iowa state Rep. Swati Dandekar supports plasma arc torch technology to cut waste at landfills

1

Supporting Music At Georgia Tech During this school year, Georgia Tech Music students and faculty have benefited from the use of quality new Yamaha Pianos, Yamaha Disklaviers, and Yamaha Clavinovas. These superb instruments have been loaned to us at no cost by Yamaha Corporation of America. This generous program has allowed us to use outstanding pianos on a daily basis; pianos that are well beyond our budget capacity. At the end of this school year, these instruments will be made available for purchase at very reduced prices for Georgia Tech Alumni, Faculty, and Staff. These pianos are less than one year old, have been meticulously maintained, and come with a new warranty. Please support the Georgia Tech Music Department Frank Clark, Ph.D. with your purchase. Having quality pianos is essential to Director & Professor providing the best education for our Georgia Tech students.

Music Department

Preview Appointments for GT Faculty, Staff, & Alumni. Call 678-442-0180 Now to schedule your Appointment

Event will be held at the Couch Music Building Friday & Saturday May 5 & May 6

Financing, delivery, and warranty services will be provided by England Piano, the local authorized Yamaha piano dealer. Any remaining pianos will be sold to the general public on Sunday, May 7.

Georgia Tech A l u m n i A sso ci a t i on

Georgia Tech Music Dept.

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Save the date! presented by

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otre Dame Tailgate 9/2/06 Family Weekend 10/6-7/06 Clemson Bus Trip '/21/06 Homecoming Weekend 10/26-28/06 UGA Bus Trip 11/25/06 For more information vfsitgtalvjnni.org 1-800-GT ALUMS .... ^k^k_JS Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

11

All-Teams Captain Radakovich named director of athletics

As senior associate athletics director at Louisiana State University, Dan Radakovich was responsible for the day-to-day operation of a $50 million athletics program in 20 sports with more than 450 student athletes.

Now Radakovich has become Georgia Tech's seventh athletics director, succeeding Dave Braine, who retired due to health problems after nearly nine years at the helm. Radakovich joins a century-long list of legendary names including John Heisman, William Alexander, Bobby Dodd and Homer Rice.

With 20 years of management experience in collegiate athletics, Radakovich "is passionate

about college athletics and brings a full appreciation for the challenges facing these great young people as they try to compete at the highest levels of athletics and academics," says Tech President Wayne Clough.

Radakovich was instrumental in developing LSU's football ticket donation program that netted more than $9 million in new annual revenue. He also participated in an ambitious capi* tal improvement initiative that raised $90 million to renovate the football stadium.

Radakovich doesn't plan any sudden changes. The football program went to bowls every season under Braine, the men's basketball program played in the

Radakovich Image: Gary Meek Sports Images: Stanley Leary

NCAA title game two years ago and the baseball, tennis, golf and Softball programs have played in recent NCAA postseason tournaments.

"As administrators, we have

to make sure that we give our student athletes all the tools possible to make their time at Georgia Tech successful," Radakovich says. "This Institute creates not only great student athletes but great leaders and we want to ^ " continue to turn out the

we need to strive for competitive excellence.

"It's also a big business. We have to be good stewards of the resources given us by the alums and fans and we pledge to do that.

"This is the challenge of a lifetime and I can't wait to get started." Âť >

INFOCUS>>> Georgia Tech

Spring 2006

Ti at the

23rd Annual Alumni Career Conference Cobb Galleria Centre â&#x20AC;˘ Wednesday, April 12 Presented by The Georgia Tech Alumni Association Meet with representatives seeking candidates in a variety of industries such as Management, Information/Technology Systems, Research and Development, Engineering/Project Management, Building Construction, Product/Brand Management, Supply Chain/Logistics, Architectural Services, Human Resources, Biotechnology, Consulting and Operations Management.

8 - 9 a.m.

Continental Breakfast Where Are the Jobs? Job Search Strategies in the 21st Century Rosita Smith Business Development Manager Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Tickets: $10 9 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Career Conference Session Alumni meet with company representatives 12:30-1:30 p.m.

Boxed Lunch Taking Your Career from Good to Great Joe Evans Chairman and CEO Flag Financial Corp.

Tickets: $10 2 - 5 p.m.

Informal interviews with selected candidates Register online at gtalumni.org/careerconference

14

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

INFOCUS<<

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Russ Chandler, IE 67, in sports jacket, stands proud with Datapath's Tech cadre: foreground, Andrew Gomel, EC 95, and, background, left to right, Jim Dale, MS ESM 93: Erik Roberts, MS EE 97; Nishant Suri, EE99; Phillip Campbell, ISyEOS; Greg Johnson, EE91; Dan Narey, EE91; Heather Goins, MgtSci 93; Adam Kirkley, CS 99; and Frank Madden, ME 71.

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Photo: Gary Meek

A. Russell "Russ" Chandler III, IE 67, has a knack for turning long shots into winners. In 2004, he arranged to buy DataPath, a company that was struggling and in desperate need of cash to finance growth. Chandler infused new capital and brought in a new management team. In 2003, DataPath sales had totaled $40 million. Two years later, revenues topped $250 million and the company had moved from its original 35,000-square-foot facility into a building three

times larger. The company's reliable, instant communication systems — engineered to operate in hostile environments — are indispensable to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — and a source of considerable pride for a group of Tech engineers.

The DataPath systems' reach is unlimited, Chandler says.

"Someone in the field in Afghanistan can talk to you in Atlanta on your cell phone." In addition to Chandler, DataPath boasts 10 other Tech alumni in key positions, ranging from sales to engineering

to human resources. By applying current electronics to military use, Chandler saves the government money and can upgrade quickly as new technologies develop. "We're providing great service to our troops. We're saving lives in the field." GT

G e o r g i a T e c h Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

TECHNOTES ISyE Named For Stewart

Final Piece

Endowment of $20 million dedicated to 'sustaining the unparalleled quality' of the school

T

he School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, ranked No. 1 in the country for the past 15 years by U.S. News & World Report, has received a commitment of $20 million from alumnus H. Milton "Milt" Stewart and his wife, Carolyn Stewart.

The commitment establishes a permanent endowment, the income from which will be available for unrestricted use within ISyE, which has been named the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

"Sustaining the unparalleled quality of the school's research programs and the excellence of its faculty and student body takes ongoing, significant investment. We are fortunate that Milt Stewart has always understood that need and offered his wholehearted support of ISyE," says College of Engineering Dean Don Giddens.

Stewart, IE 61, has a long history of philanthropy at Georgia Tech. He established an ISyE endowment fund in 1995 and the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart school chair in 1999. The

ISyE's Chelsea C. "Chip"White III thanks Carolyn and Milt Stewart for their gift of $20 million to the school.

Stewarts also have supported scholarships for female students coming to Tech from Habersham High School.

Stewart is the retired chairman and CEO of Standard Group, a company he established in 1987 with his sister, Kay Swanson, in Cornelia, Ga. Holdings at that time included Standard Telephone, which Stewart's father, H.M. Stewart Sr., purchased in 1939. Arkansas-based Alltel bought Standard Telephone in 1998.

Stewart served as the 1995-96 president of the Alumni Association, is a trustee emeritus of the Georgia Tech Foundation, emeritus member and former chairman of the ISyE advisory board and former member of the College of Engineering advisory board.

Chelsea C. "Chip" White III, who holds the Stewart school chair, says, "The opportunities presented by this commitment are nothing short of amazing. I look forward to working with our faculty, staff and administration in determining how these funds can best be used to build upon the school's long tradition of innovation, research and educational excellence and academic leadership." >Âť

Construction of the Molecular Science and Engineering Building is slated to be finished in July and open for fall classes, says Steve Swant, associate vice president for budget and planning. The five-story, 272,500-square-foot building contains classrooms and research facilities for the College of Science and the College of Engineering, including a 150-person lecture hall, four 40-person classrooms, labs and faculty and administrative offices plus an 8,000-square-foot cafe. MS&E is the fourth and final building in the Life Sciences and Technology Complex, which also includes the U.A. Whitaker Building, Parker H. Petit Biotechnology Building and Ford Environmental Science and Technology Building.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

!>>>TECHNOTES

New Management Dean Salbu's "research expertise in ethics, his vision, commitment to teaching excellence and deep understanding of the business world" will help him lead the business school to "new heights and catalyze Institutewide efforts in global innovation and sustainability."

18

S

teven Salbu, the incoming dean of the College of Management, says he looks forrd to taking Georgia Tech's business school 'the next level."

Salbu takes the helm as the Stephen P. Dean of the College of Management July all replace Terry Blum, who announced imer that she would step down to

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

return to the faculty. Blum, dean of the college since 1999, also will create and direct an interdisciplinary Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurshi p.

Salbu is currently associate dean for graduate programs and a distinguished teaching professor at the University of Texas business school. He is the director of the school's business ethics program and has served as a visit ing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, London Business School and Indian!

University.

"The faculty, students, staff and alumni of the College of Management are a remarkably talented community of scholars and professionals. They are highly motivated to take the College of Management to the next level. I look forward to joining them in this charge as we work together with energy and enthusiasm to ensure that a great Institute always has a great business school," he says.

Salbu earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from 1lofstra University, a master's degree from Dartmouth College, a master's and PhD from the Wharton School and a law degree from the College of William and Mary. He is the past editor-in-chief of the American Business Law journal and is currently on the editorial board of Business Ethics Quarterly.

Provost Jean-Lou Chameau says Salbu brings to Tech an extensive background in ethics and business law. "His research expertise in ethics, his vision, commitment to teaching excellence and deep understanding of the business world impressed the search committee. I am confident that he will lead the business school to new heights and catalyze Institutewide efforts in global innovation and sustainability." ^resident Wayne Clough adds, "At this opportunistic juncture for our business school, we believe he is ideally suited to help us identify and build the next strategic directions needed to capitalize on the momentum that exists at Georgia Tech as a whole."

Supercomputing Team

G

eorgia Tech has joined with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to conduct high-performance computing research and development of new technologies that will have a broad impact on daily life.

The College of Computing, the laboratory and UT-Battelle, a nonprofit lab management company, have teamed up to conduct large-scale research reliant on advanced supercomputing technology.

"This partnership will create a one-of-a-kind environment to help reinvigorate U.S. capabilities in supercomputing," says Richard A. DeMillo, dean of the College of Computing. "It will be easier to partner with leading research centers and academic institutions and elevate computer science research and education to a national and global scale."

Such a public-private collaboration positions the southeastern United States as a national destination for high-performance computing research.

"Georgia Tech has one of the leading computer science departments in the nation and — recognizing that high-performance computing will enable breakthrough science in the 21st century — we started a new division in computational science and engineering to train the next generation of computational researchers," DeMillo says.

"Oak Ridge National Laboratory has a long history of operating some of the most capable highperformance computers in the country," he says.

Tech's new 4,000-processor IBM eServer supercomputer — one of the fastest university computers — combined with Oak Ridge's facilities allows computational biology researchers to gather data from the sequencing of the human genome and apply it to the detection and prevention of diseases.

Jeffrey Skolnick, who headed a $200 million bioinformatics research center at the University of Buffalo, joined the Tech faculty in January, bringing 19 researchers and a $1.5 million research grant with him. (See story on Tech's eminent scholars on page 24.) Skolnick, a computational biologist, plans to use the supercomputers to break down information in the genetic code to create new drugs.

Regents professor Uzi Landman, a researcher at the School of Physics, is using supercomputerbased nanoscale simulations to create model environments for artificial atoms, known as quantum dots, which can be used to store massive

amounts of information in a compact space.

A satellite campus is planned at the Oak Ridge lab providing advanced computational science and engineering research and graduate education, DeMillo says. Thomas Zacharia, associate laboratory director at ORNL, also will be a professor at Tech. Later, classes will be taught by Oak Ridge instructors.

"College of Computing students will be able to study nanotechnology, computational biology, astrophysics, high-energy physics and chemistry with some of the best researchers in the world," DeMillo says. "This partnership represents one of the world's greatest resources for high-performance computing."

Higher Ed Yields Huge Return

G

eorgia colleges and universities contribute more than $23 billion a year to the state's economy and create more than 130,000 jobs, says Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough, who chaired an economic impact study for the Board of Regents. >»

More than 107,000 Georgians work in positions that exist because of the University System of Georgia. Another 23,000 work in jobs created through a push to commercialize new technologies throughout the state, including Scientific Atlanta, below.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

19

>>>TECHNOTES "What other appropriation of state funding gives you this kind of return?" Clough asks, noting that the overall economic impact of the University System in fiscal year 2004 was 15 times more than the state's appropriation of $1.6 billion.

Clough presented the Total Impact Task Force report at the board's January meeting.

The study found that public higher education contributes $4 billion — $712 million in research grants alone — directly to the state's economy and $5.9 billion indirectly. A whopping $10.5 billion comes from additional annual salaries earned by University System graduates compared to those with a high school education. Another $2.9 billion comes from new sales and cost savings derived from outreach programs like Tech's Advanced Technology Development Center.

The task force reported that more than 107,000 Georgians were employed in positions that existed because of the University System. Another 23,000 were working at jobs created by the University System's work in commercializing new technologies and in jobs created or saved by economic-outreach efforts.

Clough says Georgia's public colleges and universities are supplying qualified teachers for the state's classrooms, health care professionals for Georgia medical facilities and law enforcement officers for Georgia communities.

Additionally, each college and university contributes to the quality of community life by offering cultural and athletic events, facilities for public use, continuing education courses and lifelong learning experiences such as Elderhostel.

"The University System of Georgia is the state's best investment," Clough says.

Scoring in the Classroom

A

ll Georgia Tech athletic teams met or exceeded academic standards for the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years, a newly released NCAA academic progress rate revealed. The golf and women's swim team had perfect scores.

The academic progress rate measures each Division I athlete's classroom performance and teams that score below 925 — the NCAA's equivalent of a 50 percent graduation rate — may suffer scholarship reductions as high as 10 percent.

A team is awarded four possible points a year for each player — one point for each semester a student athlete keeps his eligibility and one for each semester he or she returns to school. At the end of the year, the progress rate is calculated as a percentage of the points a school could have earned.

"The football and men's basketball programs each scored APRs of 948, well above the Division I averages of 929 and 927 respectively," sports > »

20

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

Creativity is America's first line of defense against commoditization, the cancer of 21st century business, according to Peter Georgescu, retired CEO of advertising giant Peter Georgescu, whoseYoung & Rubicam. winning strategies landSpeaking at Tech, Georgescu ed the KFC and Sears says there has been a "paradigm advertising accounts, shift from a global economy driven argues that "creativity is by excess demand to a global tomorrow's factory for economy driven by excess supply. sustainable success."

In the late 1940s and throughout much of the latter part of the 20th

By Kimberly century, the demand for products Link-Wills and services far exceeded their supply. During a 50-year period, those with the capital to produce and distribute had an unparalleled advantage.

Creating Success

"By the end of the 1990s, a powerful revolution began to take place, Quietly, in industry after industry, excess supply became the new reality. By now most businesses or industries in the developed world are in a state of excess supply.

Capital is now cheap and ubiquitous. Raw materials from agriculture to metallurgy or their equivalent substitutes are all in excess supply. Oil

and water are the only major exceptions and I suggest to you that oil is only artificially in short supply," he says.

"Simply put, there's more than we need of nearly everything. The end result is commoditization, Commoditization in my mind is a condition where products look alike, feel alike, perform alike."

Georgescu set himself apart from other ad executives with creative strategies to immerse himself in the worlds of his clients. When competing for the lucrative Kentucky Fried Chicken account, Georgescu not only ate a lot of the Colonel's secret herbs and spices, he worked in a franchise so he also knew how to cook buckets of both the original recipe and extra crispy.

"We had to fix the cole slaw, the biscuits, the gravy, work the cash registers, smile at the consumers. By the time the end of the day came along, we didn't even have the energy for a can of beer," says Georgescu, who shared his recipe for landing the KFC account while at Georgia Tech to deliver an IMPACT speech at the College of Management and sign copies of his book, "The Source of Success — Five Enduring Principles at the Heart of Real Leadership."

Under Georgescu's leadership, his team won the Sears advertising account at a time when "over a dozen business magazines had already printed its obituary on their covers."

"Buried under a ton of research data was a simple fact that just jumped out at us: Eighty-four per-

cent of all purchases in Sears stores were made by women. We realized, 'We don't have to get women to go to Sears to buy products. They're already in the stores. They're just whizzing by the apparel racks and going to buy for their husbands the lawn mower and the TV set, hammers and whatnot.'

"The innovative idea was amazingly simple, as most all creative, brilliant ideas are," he says.

"This idea literally added billions of dollars in extra sales and profits for Sears. This idea was five simple words: the softer side of Sears."

Georgescu says in today's world creativity is the "only leverageable asset on a company's balance sheet." While he has no doubt that the Internet will soon become the most powerful medium in commerce and communication, Georgescu contends that creativity and innovation still are essential to success.

"In the world of excess supply, where everything ripens into a commodity given enough time, creativity is tomorrow's factory for sustainable success," Georgescu says. "More than that, all companies in tomorrow's world will have to think of innovation and differentiation as the staple of their business or else their jobs will go to India or China and then Ghana or Zaire — anywhere but here."

He says one of the best things a CEO can do is create a culture in which employees can perform at their best.

"Creativity and values form the magic elixir to success," he says.

"Create an environment which suggests that creativity is an imperative for the organization. Reward it.

Support it. Nurture it. Allow people to fail from time to time.

"Creativity must be embraced by all schools," Georgescu concludes, "from primary to graduate, all businesses and even government. Creativity is serious business."

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

21

> >TECHNOTES

Game On Symposium empowers players, creators, distributors

By Kimberly Link-Wills

A giant of the gaming industry, a Halo warrior with a groupie following and a Georgia Tech alumnus with both vision and deep pockets were among the speakers at the Institute's second Living Game Worlds symposium in February,

his cohorts at Rooster Teeth Productions to take the computer game The Sims and a popular Xbox game, Halo, and bring the characters to wisecracking life through Machinima, a technique in which films are made using video game engines.

Sims creator Will Wright, who last year received the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Progress and Service, returned to again deliver a keynote address, a PowerPoint presentation that related game design to everything from Japanese gardens to spaceship control panels to shopping habits.

In introducing Hullum, assistant professor Michael Nitsche says the Rooster Teeth crew, initially made famous on the Internet through the "Red vs. Blue" short film spoofs of Halo, is "probably the only Machinima group that actually has groupies."

He compares the freshest batch of college graduates seeking jobs with him at Maxis, the company he cofounded, to inhabitants of "The Island of Dr. Moreau."

"Students are coming out with these skill sets that I didn't see 10 years ago. It used to be very specialized" between programmers and designers, Wright says. "Now we've got these crossbreeds coming out. I expect you to keep crossbreeding these strange creatures."

These creatures will only be limited by their imaginations, he says. "As designers I feel we are much more constrained by our imaginations than we are by technology."

Imagination allowed Matt Hullumand

Hullum â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to groupies, he's the voice of Sarge in "Red vs. Blue" â&#x20AC;&#x201D; says Rooster Teeth looked for something they could pull from within Halo, a game in which the objective basically is to kill the other players and steal an enemy flag.

"When we looked around there was basically this canyon that had nothing in it. We thought, Why are these two teams of guys killing each other in this canyon with no way in or out for no reason? Maybe they should talk about that.'"

The amusing and profanity-filled conversations, gunfire and jaunts around the canyon have spawned three DVD collections as well as a short for MTV's "Total Request Live" that Hullum shares with the audience. He also shows a scene from "Strangerhood," which is based on The Sims. Dozens of eyes turn to Wright, who is right in the front row laughing along with the rest of the crowd.

Chris Klaus, CIs 96, could afford to laugh all the way to the bank. He earned millions by founding Internet Security Systems and now has broken into the digital entertainment marketplace with Kaneva, which he cofounded in 2004. He also has given Georgia Tech $15 million for construction of an advanced computing building that will bear his name.

"With Kaneva we're working to help democratize entertainment. There's an opportunity to open up the doors for a lot more people to participate in entertainment," Klaus says. "Everybody should have their own channel, even if it just goes to their family and a few friends.

"The next major battle in high-tech is going to be for the living room and how you get your entertainment, The computer is going to evolve into your entertainment system."

Editor's note: Matt Hullum, left, did some design work for the ALUMNI MAGAZINE before becoming a Machinima pioneer. His father, Everett Hullum, has been the magazine's designer for most of the past 18 years and now splits his time between New Mexico and Hawaii, staying connected to Tech via the Internet.

Georgia Tech Alumni Mag

6T

information director Allison George says.

The baseball team's 974 and women's basketball's 977 were more than 40 points higher than average. Other high-scoring teams included women's track and field with a 990 for both the indoor and outdoor teams, women's tennis at 983, volleyball at 978 and men's swimming at 971.

"This APR report is a positive reflection on the work of our student athletes in the classroom and the support system that we have in place for them," says Phyllis LaBaw, Tech's associate director of athletics for academic services.

As a member of the NCAA governing body that set the standards, President Wayne Clough says something was needed to supplement graduation rate data, which measures what has happened in the past rather than what is currently happening.

"We take great pride in the success of our student athletes," Clough says. "Performance in the classroom as well as performance on the field continues to be our priority at Tech."

NLR can be described as a very fast highway with multiple lanes. Some lanes are reserved for researchers requiring very fast, direct connections.

To access these dedicated lanes, researchers pay a fee for the premium service based on distance, bandwidth and time. One of the other lanes on the NLR highway, called the National Exchange Fabric, is shared and available to Georgia Tech researchers at no charge for demonstration projects to the connected universities and research institutions.

"NLR provides Georgia Tech researchers unprecedented control over a network infrastructure with up to 40 individual light paths â&#x20AC;&#x201D; each of which can transmit data at 10 gigabits per second and be used to deploy dedicated side-by-side, but physically and operationally separate, production and experimental networks," says Ron Hutchins, Georgia Tech's chief technology officer and associate vice provost for research and technology, GT

Diving into the AReal World

Fast, Elite Network Complete

G

eorgia Tech researchers now have access to the recently completed National LambdaRail, an advanced fiber optic network that offers connectivity to more than 150 universities, research institutions and other organizations across the country.

NLR's advanced optical, Ethernet and Internet protocol network infrastructure consists of more than 10,000 miles of fiber optic cable. Georgia participants in Southern Light Rail, the Atlanta node of NLR, include Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, the Medical College of Georgia and University of Georgia.

"Georgia Tech invested in this fiber optic network so that our researchers, who often deal with massive amounts of data or need real-time remote control of sophisticated equipment located across the country, will have access to the most robust network possible," explains Charles Liotta, Tech's vice provost for research and graduate studies and Regents professor of chemistry.

Because NLR owns the underlying fiber optic cable and optical equipment, as well as other networking equipment, it can cost-effectively implement multiple, diverse experimental and production networks on its nationwide optical fiber footprint with unprecedented flexibility and responsiveness.

';

>7 m &m^

Gov. Sonny Perdue, left, and Bernie Marcus welcome visitors to the Georgia Aquarium during opening ceremonies. Marcus poured an estimated $250 million into the facility, which employs a number of Tech graduates.

Photo: Gary Meek

u

Bernie Marcus, cofounder of The Home Depot and benefactor of the Georgia Aquarium, will deliver the commencement address on May 6.

More than 2,000 undergraduate and graduate degrees will be presented during the ceremony, scheduled from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Georgia Dome.

Marcus and Arthur Blank founded The Home Depot in 1979.

For more information: Georgia Tech's online commencement guide includes services offered to the newest members of the Alumni Association and may be found at http://www.gatech. edu/commencement/ resources.php.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

The Brain Trust The Georgia Research Alliance is an enterprising consortium of universities, government and industry investing in eminent scholars and relying on scientific discovery to drive the state's economy, launch high-tech companies and create high-wage jobs.

By John Dunn Photography: Billy Howard

24

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

Tlie Georgia Research Alliance creates and sustains an innovativedriven economy, says alumnus Michael Cassidy, president and CEO of the alliance.

Cassidy helped recruit many of Tech's 19 GRA eminent scholars.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

25

J

effrey Skolnick wants a niche with a competitive edge. "The best scientists are consummate opportunists," says Skolnick, a systems biologist and renowned researcher who joined Georgia Tech this spring as the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology.

Skolnick and his team of 19 research scientists arrived at Tech with $1.5 million in federal funding. The former director of the Buffalo Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics at SUNY-Buffalo,

"Georgia Tech gave me the opportunity to focus on the research and then to see some of the results translated into new businesses.

The atmosphere at Tech is invigorating." â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Barbara Boyan

Skolnick identifies the GRA as a significant competitive edge.

"Georgia Tech is late to systems biology, so we have to seek an unfair competitive advantage," Skolnick states. "If you are three or four years down, you've got to be a little more clever in carving out a niche."

A discipline that integrates mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and advanced computing, systems biology is established at the Stanford University Genome Technology Center, Âť >

Georgia Research Alliance EMINENT SCHOLARS at Georgia Tech

Thomas P. Barnwell Arbutus Chair in Distributed ,_ .

Engineering Education

Focus: Technologyenhanced education, including speech cod,. . ing, objective measures 3

for speech quality testing, multiprocessor architectures for digital signal processing and digital signal processing algorithms.

"Education is the 'black gold' of the 21st century and information technology is creating the greatest changes in education history," Barnwell says. "Both the opportunities and challenges are huge. The way to succeed and to lead this revolution is to transform our institutions of higher learning into engines for educational content creation and delivery and to extend their educational reach to new distributed populations of underserved students." Vision: Create a culture in which empowered and engaged faculties operate in an environment of perpetual educational creation, developing content and innovating in curriculum, pedagogy and technology.

26

Barbara D. Focus: Bone and cartiBoyan lage cell biology, tissue Tissue Engineering engineering of musculoskeletal tissues, steroid hormone action and biological mineralization. "We have identified a new class of steroid hormone receptors that are associated with the cell membrane," Boyan says. "Some of their effects are directly on gene transcription through recognized pathways and other effects are indirectly through the traditional steroid hormone receptors by modifying their activity. One of these receptors is for estrogen and is active only in cells that come from female animals and humans. This is particularly exciting because it helps to explain why male and female cells respond in different ways to the same signals." Vision: "By understanding how cells and tissues work, we will be able to identify and develop new approaches for health care."

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

Jean-Luc Bredas Molecular Design

Focus: To design new electrically and/or optically active organic materials, with emphasis on organic and plastic semiconductors that can be incorporated as active elements in new generations of flexible electronic and photonic components, including light-emitting diodes for displays or solidstate lighting, photovoltaic detectors and solar cells, field-effect transistors, chemical and biochemical sensors or all-optical switches. Bredas is working to establish Tech's Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics as a premier research and educational resource for the creation of devices that serve the information technology, energy and defense sectors. Vision: Multidisciplinary collaborations will help enable a new generation of devices and systems meet the ever-changing challenges and create the opportunity for disruptive technologies by developing new materials with emergent properties.

wm .ffiMpa

Jeffrey Focus: Computational biolSkolnick 째9y> bioinformatics and Computational systems biology; development Systems 째* t00 * s *or t n e P re_ Biology diction of protein structure and function; functional genomics; metabolic pathways; and other research that will allow creation of personalized drugs that target specific cells within particular individuals. "We have developed novel approaches that can predict whether a protein is a druggable target," Skolnick says. "This has many applications to medicine." Vision: To be able to simulate at molecular detail a single cell. In doing so, one would understand the basic principles of life.

"The strategic vision of the administration, the openness to the world and the interdisciplinary mind-set that permeate the campus, quite simply, convinced us Tech is the right place to conduct our research." â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Jean-Luc Bredas

Princeton University Simons Center for Systems Biology and Harvard University's Department of Systems Biology.

"We have to leverage a skill set that they don't have. Otherwise, we're just late to the party. I would argue that the last thing you want to do is 'me-too' science," Skolnick says.

"The Georgia Research Alliance and the state of Georgia are an unfair competitive advantage," which he says leverages resources "to make research realistic."

Georgia Research Alliance EMINENT SCHOLARS at Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine

Another competitive edge he points to is Tech's collaborative environment.

"Systems biology is fundamentally multidisciplinary," Skolnick says. "Georgia Tech and the School of Biology are doing some incredible work in cancer research. Tech has a world-class engineering school, a world-class computer science program and a lot of first-rate scientists who are willing to talk to each other and collaborate.

That's an unfair competitive advantage that can be leveraged.

"You have a great quality of life, you have great resources and there is a great university and the commitment to build. Georgia Tech has a track record of building excellence — it's not like this is the first time Georgia Tech has done this."

S

kolnick is the 19th eminent scholar to be named to Tech's faculty and the 51st GRA eminent scholar. Bringing Skolnick and his team of scientists to the Institute is just what the GRA was designed for when it was founded in

Focus: Environmental geotechnology, susProvost, tainable technology, Hightower Chair experimental soil in Environmental dynamics, micro-physTechnologies ical properties of soil, earthquake engineering, liquefaction of soils, soil-structure interaction problems, reliability and economic assessment of engineering systems and fuzzy sets, neural networks and knowledge-based systems in engineering. Tech is involved with corporate partnerships exploring commitments to sustainability and prosperity from the boardroom to the shop floor and beyond — to the myriad communities the corporation touches throughout the life cycles of its products. Vision: To make environmental stewardship a competitive advantage for industry by connecting technology and economic development with environmental entrepreneurship.

Jean-Lou Chameau

1990 as a public-private partnership between Georgia research universities, businesses and the state government.

The GRA creates and sustains an innovativedriven economy, says C. Michael Cassidy, MS TASP 87, president and chief executive officer.

The alliance fuels Georgia's technology economy by drawing distinguished scholars to the state's six leading research universities, where research initiatives are converted into products, services and jobs, Cassidy says. Its success >»

John A. Focus: Issues related Copeland to transporting voice, John Weitnauer Jr. video and data over Chair in Technology t h e internet protocol Transfer at the network layer and heterogeneous networks at the data link and physical layers. His research interests in a heterogeneous network environment include quality of service, connection admission, routing, control and feature support. "One of the biggest challenges to beneficial use of the Internet has become securing data networks and computers from hackers, viruses, worms and spyware," Copeland says. Vision: An economy so efficient everyone has time to pursue intellectual, social and recreational activities without feeling pressure to work long hours at unchallenging tasks just to survive and family, friends and colleagues, though they may be far apart, seem closer due to enhanced telecommunications secure from network attacks and identity theft.

"With the outstanding support of the Georgia Research Alliance, Georgia Tech is embarking on building a world-class program in systems biology. The excitement of helping contribute to this goal drew me to Georgia."

—Jeffrey Skolnick

Robert E. Dickinson Georgia Power Scholar in Global Environment

Focus: Improving the l an d surface component of climate models and related issues such as global warming and links to hydrological cycle. Dickinson is working with new satellite data on albedo and other parameters connected to vegetation to better quantify these aspects of the climate system. His work also studies some advances in discovering and quantifying key aspects of the determination of land evapotranspiration and surface temperature in a climate model as well as applications to climates of urban areas and implications of land use changes for precipitation. Vision: Use of modern technologies from computing and satellite remote sensing to obtain more realistic approaches to inclusion of land in climate models.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

29

The expertise in sustainable technology and management at Georgia Tech, combined with partnerships with worldclass corporations, constitutes a unique laboratory for developing leading-edge approaches and technologies." â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Jean-Lou Chameau

has made it a model program emulated by other states and the GRA's strategic role has been covered in The Wfall Street journal and The New York Times.

The Georgia Biomedical Industry recognized Cassidy for "extraordinary contributions to the growth of Georgia's biomedical community" at its annual awards ceremony in January.

The organization observed that Cassidy and the GRA "have worked to achieve a level of collaboration among Georgia's research universities, state government and business and industry that

is arguably the most effective and strongest of any state in the nation."

Cassidy is no stranger to the entrepreneurial process. He developed his professional skills helping fledgling companies get started. Before joining the GRA in 1993, he managed the Advanced Technology Development Center at Tech.

Cassidy says that from the outset the plan intended for GRA scholars to lead research and development efforts that would stimulate the economy by generating cutting-edge companies

Georgia Research Alliance EMINENT SCHOLARS at Georgia Tech

James Foley Focus: Human-comStephen Fleming puter interaction; na r C ' in human-human interacTelecommunications U o n m e d i a t e d b y c o m . puters/communications, especially collaborative work and collaborative learning; computer graphics; informational visualization; and management of research and development and technology transfer. Lab work includes experiments with Webbased video lectures viewed by students before coming to class so that class can be more interactive and dynamic.

Experiments show student performance increases and faculty can spend more time interacting with students rather than lecturing to them. Vision: A world in which it is as easy for people to work and learn together at a distance as it is to learn together in person. Experts in computing and communications and psychology and sociology and the learning sciences must all work together to fulfill this vision.

30

Don P. Giddens

Focus: Fluid mechanics applied to understanding and treating Biomedical Engineering, cardiovascular disease Dean of the College and diseases of the of Engineering, liver. "We are developLawrence L. Gellerstedt Jr. Chair ing the capability to 'look inside' human in Bioengineering arteries and describe blood flow dynamics â&#x20AC;&#x201D; without getting inside," Giddens says. Noninvasive imaging and mathematics to model blood flow provide exceptional information about artery disease development and treatment.

Giddens is investigating clinical issues in the liver, using methodologies similar to those that have proven successful in the cardiovascular system. Vision: To understand how mechanical forces influence the biology of human arteries, as related to the development of cardiovascular diseases and their treatment, and to understand the hemodynamics of the liver.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

Russell D. Focus: The DupuiS growth of III-V Steve W. Chaddick compound Chair in semiconductor Electro-Optics materials and devices, including device design, processing, testing and simulation.

"We are developing 'wide bandgap' semiconductors and are working to improve materials quality and device performance," Dupuis says. "We have several worldwide device records at this time and want to be at the leading edge of this important new technology. We are developing a new company based in Atlanta to commercialize these advances. Vision: Developing advanced electronic materials and devices for futuregeneration commercial and defense applications.

and creating high-wage jobs. Skolnick is an ideal example.

"Dr. Skolnick is an entrepreneurial scholar whose research is critical to the future health of Georgians and Americans," Cassidy says. "He has relationships with pharmaceutical and technology companies, holds three patents, has developed and licensed software to biotech companies and has founded an early-stage structural proteomics company. This is the mix of entrepreneurialism and scholarly acumen we seek in our scholars."

T

ech Provost Jean-Lou Chameau, a GRA eminent scholar since 1994, observes, "Computational systems biology is a foundation for the next revolution in biomedicine. Dr. Skolnick's work is a perfect fit with the outstanding research already being conducted in nanotechnology and bioengineering here at Georgia Tech."

Skolnick uses supercomputer clusters to process large calculations and study huge amounts of DN A data produced by gene sequencing. He applied algorithm development and specific > »

"The close partnership between Georgia Tech and the Emory Medical School offers me the ability to develop unique research and educational activities that I find extremely exciting."

— Don P. Giddens

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

31

Focus: Synthetic membranes and Membrane Science high-performand Technology, ance barriers, Roberto C. Goizueta processes to Chair in Chemical make synthetic Engineering membranes and processes that use membranes to separate mixtures into more valuable purified products. Synthetic membranes â&#x20AC;&#x201D; thin man-made barriers capable of separating mixtures by selective passage of molecules that have different characteristics â&#x20AC;&#x201D; are molecular-scale filters. Koros' lab designs, makes and uses them to separate many gas mixtures including separating oxygen and nitrogen from air and removing impurities from natural gas. "Eventually we hope to remove undesirable components from exhaust gases â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the application possibilities are almost unlimited," Koros says. Vision: To create the next generation of packaging and membrane materials with the potential to minimize energy, environmental and economic costs associated with performing important separations and improving packing of diverse products.

William J. Koros

. / rim

computational methods to model an entire class of protein sequences in the human genome.

In February, Skolnick announced his research team has created more than 900 three-dimensional computer models of G-protein-coupled receptors — proteins involved in many types of stimulusresponse pathways, including intercellular communication — that could accelerate drug research.

"We wanted to predict the three-dimensional structure of all proteins below a certain size in the human genome," Skolnick says.

Stephen C. Harvey Computational Structural Biology

Focus: The structure dynamics of biological macromolec u i e s — proteins, nucleic acids, lipids and carbohydrates — and the relationship to biological function. Results form the basis for the design of new drugs and for developing a variety of new tools for the biotechnology industry. "We are tackling structure-function problems in very large macromolecular assemblies," Harvey says, that require development of a molecularmodeling package capable of treating such systems at all levels of detail, from the atomic level up. Vision: A combination of bioinformatics approaches offers computational biologists incredible new opportunities to investigate macromolecular structure-function relationships. The aim is to develop structural and dynamic models that rationalize all the available data. and

Drug designers use computer simulations to study how different drugs interact with cellular targets, which helps enable researchers to develop the most effective compounds to treat specific diseases.

About one-third of commercial drugs target G-protein-coupled receptors, which are membrane proteins that convey chemical signals from the outside of cells to the inside. They are used to research appetite and such diseases as schizophrenia and Parkinson's. The announcement was > »

Jiri Janata Sensors and Instrumentation

Focus: Electroanalytical chemistry, chemical s e n s 0 rs and interfacial chemistry as well as basic scientific issues impacting environment and security. Janata is synthesizing, characterizing and studying electronic materials that have optimized selectivity for detection of chemicals and are used for design and fabrication of distributed sensing arrays. They are also used as functional materials in so-called organic electronics.

Janata also is investigating biologically inspired artificial sensory systems "to mimic the strategies that marine animals use in their search for food and to adopt those chemical signaling strategies to design arrays of distributed chemical sensors. Vision: To cultivate development and deployment of modern chemical sensors in environmental and security areas.

"Basic research is supported by state-ofthe-art facilities and outstanding graduate programs, leading to one of the best collaborative environments for research and development of biotechnology in the world."

— Stephen Harvey

Focus: Communications, computing and content John Pippin and wireless multimedia.

Chair in Jayant is researching core Wireless advances in pervasive Systems broadband technology, with an impact on new capabilities in a vast palate of user-centric communications. Jayant cites for example a telehealth research program that includes the beginnings of a physician-friendly Medical TIVO (joint work with Medical College of Georgia and Georgia State University) and an automatic video quality meter for network operators that simulates how a human observer may judge the quality of television-on-demand (joint work with Jayant's start-up company EGT).

Vision: A scenario in which the richness, spontaneity and quality of communications are controlled by the human communicator and not limited by telecommunication links or computing systems.

Nikil S. Jayant

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

33

"I have long been impressed with

made in the Feb. 17 issue of Public Library of Science Computational Biology.

Georgia's technology vision for the 21st century and with Georgia Tech's culture for industry collaboration." â&#x20AC;&#x201D; RaoR. Tummala

L

ike Skolnick, the GRA scholars have contributed significantly to Georgia's robust economy. Their scientific success and entrepreneurial energy have helped bring into the state nearly $300,000 a day in new federal and private research dollars. They are also the founders of new companies and work closely with established com-

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

panies to develop new products and new markets.

Advances in tissue engineering by Tech professor and eminent scholar Barbara Boyan, for example, resulted in the creation of a new company to market her discovery.

The alliance has invested some $400 million to attract its eminent scholars, leverage an additional $2 billion in federal and private funding, create more than 5,000 new technology jobs, generate some 120 new technology companies and

assist established Georgia companies to expand into new markets, Cassidy says.

In addition to Tech, the other GRA-affiliated research universities (in order of date founded) are the University of Georgia, Medical College of Georgia, Emory University, Clark Atlanta University and Georgia State University.

William J. Todd, IM 71, founding president of the GRA and now president of the Georgia Cancer Coalition, says the alliance has a savvy strategy.

"In order to win the World Series, a team

must have a great farm system supplemented by importing the best free agents in baseball. These GRA eminent scholars are our free agents who join with our homegrown talent such as the President's Scholars to build a robust technologybased economy for Georgia," Todd says.

Tech's 19 eminent scholars and their colleagues represent a distinguished brain trust in pursuit of scientific discovery that will fuel economic development and shape the technological future. GT

"The atmosphere of scientific excitement at Tech and Emory created a superb opportunity for me; my research is interdisciplinary and thrives on creative ideas from faculty and students."

— EberhardO.Voit

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Rick P. Trebino Focus: Measure Ultrafast Optical ultrashort laser Physics pulses — the shortest events ever created — and research their applications in telecommunications, astrobiology, biotechnology and social problems. Trebino can measure even complex pulses relevant to chemistry, biology, physics and engineering. Trebino has developed an extremely simple and compact device that measures every characteristic of an ultrashort laser pulse, including its spatio-temporal distortions. It is the main product of a new company he formed called Swamp Optics (the products have names like FROG and TADPOLE). Another invention is a new type of polarimeter, which has the potential to find signs of life on other planets and to aid in the development of new medicines. Another new company, Stheno, is commercializing this technology. Vision: Many great ideas have resulted from combinations of seemingly unrelated concepts.

RaoR. Tummala

Focus: Pioneering SOP for convergent electronic Electronic and and bio-electronic sysBio-electronic tems, nanosystems and Systems by nanopackaging and elecSystem-ontronic materials and Package processes. Tummala demonstrated the first SOP for convergent system prototype with integration of radio frequency, optical and digital components based on the new fundamental microsystem paradigm called System-on-Package and created a new vision called SOP for new convergent systems industry. Vision: To pioneer and demonstrate the 2nd Moore's Law for mega-function systems, in contrast to the 1st Moore's Law for ICs for discrete systems; to be the global leader in SOP research and education in partnership with the global electronics industry.

Eberhard O. Voit David D. Flanagan Chair in Systems

Focus: Complex systerns in biology and medicine, metabolic networks, proteomics, Biology biochemical systems theory and S-systems. DNA microarrays, proteome chips, mass spectrometry of thousands of metabolites at once, intracellular nuclear magnetic resonance and numerous other advances in biology are generating unprecedented insights into the physiological responses of organisms to stimuli. Vision: To understand how biological systems function; how genomic, metabolic, proteomic components cooperate in an integrated, concerted fashion; and why systems are designed and operate in the specific manner we observe in nature and to apply this understanding to advancing medicine, biotechnology, drug development and productive and sustainable stewardship of the environment.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

35

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

Frank Norton makes all his chickens from scratch

By Kimberly Link-Wills Photography: Gary Meek

F

rank Norton Jr. doesn't need to produce works of Chick'in Scratch to make a living. He's president of the W.L. Norton Agency, a real estate and insurance company based in Gainesville, Ga., started by his grandfather in 1928, that did $450 million in business in 2005. He paints chickens to relieve the stress brought on by running a company with 300 employees in nine offices.

Perhaps that's putting the chicken before the egg. The father of three, Norton, BC 79, swears he's always been the one to prepare school lunches each morning. When his oldest child began taking her lunch in elementary school, Norton decorated the paper sacks with crayons and markers, drawing bunnies and pumpkins.

"I started doing all kinds of things. If she had on a flowered jacket, I'd do flowers," he says.

"Sometime in the mid-'90s I started doing caricatures of chickens and I started naming them. Gainesville is chickens," Norton says of his hometown, heralded in those parts as the "poultry capital of the world."

"I then started doing it as >Âť

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

Norton is branching out beyond chickens to surf and turf.

"A friend took me out to Utah trout fishing and I said, let me give you a chicken.' He said, 'No, draw me a trout. stress therapy. My wife came to me with a pad one day and said, 'You need to think about something other than real estate,'" says Norton, who notes that he heads the creative and strategic planning leg of the business while brother Bob, IM 83, runs the insurance part.

A longtime supporter of the arts, Norton donated a few of his birds for a fund-raising auction at the Quinlan Art Center in Gainesville. "They sold for $500 apiece," he says. "So I said, 'Let's try putting them in some galleries as a lark.' And they sold. That was in 2000.

It started with a gallery in Atlanta and one thing led to another. Now I sell about 200 a year."

Norton dabbled in art during high school but never considered pursuing painting as a career. He enrolled at Tech, where he flip-flopped between a major in building construction and one in architecture, which allowed him to take art and design courses. "Tech gave me proportion and scale, an appreciation for color," he says.

"In the realm of art I'm a trained artist," Norton says. "I can't be classified as a folk artist because I have had some classes. Lagerquist Gallery in Buckhead calls my style 21st century folk art."

The family names of his 21st century birds come from much older sources.

The last names are taken from Greek gods and goddesses. "The first names come out of Southern telephone books," says Norton, whose personal favorite is Buck Apollo. "I made him into a T-shirt that I give my friends. I will not sell Buck Apollo."

The chickens that haven't been trucked to the dozen and a half galleries that sell Norton's work are cooped up in his studio, a converted storage shed on his three-plus-acre property along Lake Lanier. He also does commissions and recently had

38

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring

a pair of chickens, a husband and wife, drying on a pool table in his house.

"I did a commission for a family in Buckhead. The lady's name was Tess.

She had flaming red hair. The family said, 'We would like to give a portrait of her as a chicken for Christmas.' They said I nailed it," says Norton, who doesn't get ruffled about taking a human's personality and likeness and transforming her into a caricature of a chicken.

"Art is very subjective, especially art that has personality. My art has personality," he says, pointing to a longlegged lady bird in red. "You can see Bitsy is a society lady in Buckhead with fur on her collar. I paint what I like. I paint to have fun. I'll continue to paint as long as it is fun. It can't be a job. I have one of those.

"I draw from Gainesville and its people and personalities. They're people dressed up in chicken suits, they're not birds any longer," Norton says. "I did a special show at the Quinlan and I did their top 50 donors as chickens. I really worked on their personalities. I knew all of these people. I gave them to the Quinlan and they sold them."

He says most of the major poultry companies have a piece of Chick'in

Scratch. Politicians on both sides of the aisle own Norton chickens. Mr. Perdue has one. That's Sonny Perdue, as does Cathy Cox, the candidate eyeing the governor's roost.

"The largest painting I've sold was a commission and it was four panels that were 6 feet tall and 12 feet long. It was a flock of chickens," says Norton, who prices his gallery stock between $85 and $2,500.

Norton now is branching out beyond chickens to surf and turf. "A friend took me out to Utah trout fishing and I said, 'Let me give you a chicken.'

He said, 'No, draw me a trout.' I said, T don't draw trout.' He said, 'Draw me a trout.' I now do what I call Electric Trout. The trout don't have names.

They don't have much personality. All the galleries have chickens, some now have trout and one is testing landscapes."

He bases his vividly colored landscapes on a trip his family took to Costa Rica last year and uses the pieces to expand his artistic horizons. "I want to do some big landscapes," Norton says, throwing his arms wide apart.

Despite the fact that he's spreading his wings, Norton continues to paint in the shed, cold in the winter and hot in the summer, illuminated by strings of lights powered by a trailing extension cord. He bought his high school art teacher's easel at an estate sale. His paints are tossed into a rusty wire basket. The Norton family's three dogs saunter into the wide-open doors and wag their tails against the canv vases.

"It's a hobby, not a job," he stresses. "I guess I could make a reasonable living at this, but then it'd be like work. I'm not in it for the money. I'm in it for the therapy. It's great therapy."

You could say it's cheep therapy, GT

"As a Georgia Tech st and Roll Call phonatho: caller, I directly experience the

generosity

of

Tech

alumni and I am grateful for all that they provide for students like me. I feel confident in my own future, and

in

the

increasing

value of my Georgia Tech degree." -Mike Bivone, IE '06

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Your Gift Enhances the Value of Every Tech Degree ^^ GEORGIA TBCH AUIMNI ASSOCIATION •J>»1 ANNUAL ROM. CAM.

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

39

>>PACESETTERS

Flying High Alumnus finds 15 minutes of fame with magazine interview

By Leslie Overman Photograph: Nell Redmond

A

Stepps a household name, but it has made him a celebrity among family, friends and co-workers.

Stepps, a sales manager, was selected for an interview by one of Sky magazine's editors and a photographer when passing through a terminal at Atlanta's

name like Palace Stepps gets noticed. Stepps' father, Fred, considered

passing his own name on to his

son, but his mother insisted on something one of a kind. "No offense to the Freds out there, but thank God Mom won that one. My dad always told me that with a name like Palace I had better do something to be famous," says Stepps, ChE 93, of Charlotte, N.C. An interview in Delta's Sky magazine hasn't exactly made Palace

lia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Each issue of the magazine profiles a Delta passenger, and Stepps was interviewed and photographed on the spot.

The same day Stepps learned that he was featured in the October issue, he was on a flight to Portland, Ore. The man seated next to him did a double take. He had just finished the article and was putting away the magazine when "he opened it again and looked at me," Stepps says. "I smiled and said, 'Yes, it's me.' He and I began to talk. It turns out that he was a

Georgia Tech alumnus too. We talked Tech football and basketball the entire trip to Portland."

Stepps' family and friends "were thrilled about the article.

Everyone wanted a copy of it. We have a family friend who works for Delta. She was able to get a couple of dozen copies for my mother. I would swear she was handing them to anyone she encounters â&#x20AC;&#x201D; strangers or otherwise."

Stepps endured some goodnatured teasing from friends and co-workers after the article was published. On one business trip, a colleague prompted a flight attendant to ask Stepps for his autograph. "I got comments from all the passengers around me for the balance of the flight," he says.

An unexpected reunion also resulted from the article. Stepps received a letter from his high school public speaking teacher who had seen it. "We exchanged e-mails and later spoke on the

telephone. I was thrilled that she remembered me after 21 years."

Stepps joined the Air Force as a linguist in 1984 after graduating from Westwood High School in Atlanta. Stepps says he completed about half of his undergraduate degree while on active duty in Maryland, then in 1991 transferred to the Reserve and to Georgia Tech.

After graduating from Tech two years later, he began a career in the paper industry while continuing to serve in the Air Force Reserve. He was called to active duty for Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, serving for 10

months. In September, he retired from the Reserve after more than 21 years of service.

In 1995, Stepps married his college sweetheart, Samello "Mel" Richardson, also a 1993 chemical engineering graduate. Mel works in the paper industry as well, serving as the pulping technical manager at Bowater he's Catawba, S.C., mill.

In the Sky article, when asked whom he most likes to travel with, Stepps said, "I like traveling with my wife, Samello.

She is the most energetic person know. She has the energy,

and I have the curiosity."

Stepps says his wife was thrilled about the article. They "travel to a few Tech football games each year" and "always try to make it to Homecoming. Mel likes to socialize and see old friends. I go for the football."

In May 2005, Stepps was awarded an MBA from Winthrop University. "Now that I have the Air Force and the weekend MBA program behind me and Mel is about to complete her master of engineering degree this spring, Tech can count on two raving maniacs

at most of the home games," Stepps says.

The article has made an impact. Since its publication, Stepps has accepted a new position as KraftPak sales manager at MeadWestvaco, "When I was in discussions with my new employer, one of the gentlemen I spoke with said, 'When I saw your resume I already knew you because I read about you in Delta's Sky magazine. Man, you are famous.' That made the interviews a lot more relaxing." G T

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

41

>>INTERVIEW

JOSEPH HU( Big Questions About the Big Easy Interview by

Kimberly Link-Wills Hughes Images: Gary Meek New Orleans Images: Courtesy Joseph Hughes

Orleans and LSU — and in Joseph Hughes chairs the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech and serves on the EPA's partnership with the American Society of Civil Engineers to environmental engineering advisory committee. He toured have a forum on the subject of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast with President Wayne rebuilding New Orleans. Tech Clough in November, spoke to former Alumni Association led the proposal submission, trustees in January and recently sat down with the ALUMNI and we received almost $60,000 from the foundation. Our goal is MAGAZINE. Hughes now is helping coordinate a conference to look forward and not to loo that will address the future of New Orleans.

What is Georgia Tech's role in the rebuilding of New Orleans?

We're at the stage right now in the discussion where there are real questions whether we should rebuild or what we should rebuild. Clearly the city will be forever changed.

We were brought in initially — President Clough, myself and others — to engage in a discussion from the civil engineering perspective. What we realized is this is a problem that goes far beyond infrastructure.

Corps of Engineers sought us out for advice. We have a tremendous breadth of talent.

We've got members of the faculty who are much more engaged than I am. We've got a growing number of projects that our faculty are supporting.

Coastal disasters are something that Georgia needs to worry about, so we worry about it. A storm like Katrina could just as easily hit Savannah. We have very good coastal group at Georgia Tech Savannah.

President Clough is guably the most visible civil engineer in academia today.

When you talk about giants, he is at the head of the list.

Georgia Tech has the best civil engineering program in the region and is ranked number ee in the nation. The Armv

How will you proceed?

A proposal has been funded from the United Engineering Foundation for Georgia Tech and our partner universities — Tulane, the University of New

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

to the past and really explore what it would mean to protect New Orleans and the region.

We're proposing to do a scenario analysis that would allow us to consider anything from doing nothing to building the most incredible infrastructure project the United States has ever seen. What I think most people believe is that it will be somewhere in the middle.

> > I N T E RVI EW

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The people who are working there are going to be in an environment that is potentially hazardous to their health. It will be worse once we get into the warmer parts of the year.

There's a tremendous amount of waste within the city that has the potential to cause all sorts of human health problems.

Will the forum address issues outside engineering?

The human component of this is extremely important. We could build anything hypothetically, but what we really want to do is build things for the people who will benefit from them.

What is it that's going to get people, particularly businesses, to re-establish operations?

We certainly need people who can help us understand economics and the processes that enter into decision making. Our goal is not to become paralyzed or intertwined in all the politics of it but to be able to think about what it is that needs to be done.

Decision makers at all levels are struggling in regard to longterm issues. Short-term issues are putting the fires out basically.

What do you do after that? This is something that requires some thought. We are not the only people who are trying to do this.

But we do think we're taking a unique approach to it and have the capacity to make some contributions.

What kinds of contributions?

There will probably be various types of documents to come from it, but we're trying to use an innovative way to disseminate our information. It's going to be Web based. We're using a Wiki page that the experts will be able to work from before the conference to help develop materials, and then we'll be able to follow up on it after the conference. It's something that's going to be available globally. We can even pull in people to work on the Wiki page who may not even

44

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

St. Louis Cathedral

be at the conference. We have the potential to develop a warehouse of usable information.

What this will do, and I think it's going to be very timely, is provide information from world-class experts that will be usable by the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Academy of Engineering â&#x20AC;&#x201D; usable by a range of groups that have some role to play in this. I think it may be something that will be useful to Congress.

One other thing that we put in the proposal that I think is very important is that we want to think of it from an educational perspective. What can we draw from this event that will be useful in engineering education? It's an example of how we as a society have managed risk. In the case of New Orleans, this was an interesting and long story of risk management.

Wasn't the risk of living in the city of New Orleans widely understood?

In California they have this saying about "the big one." But in recognition of that, the way they build things in California is strongly influenced. New Orleans is different. There was the recognition that the city is below sea level in a hurricaneprone region. How much faith do you put in those levees?

Fundamentally the people who were living there put all their possessions in the security of the levees.

The failed levees that we're talking about were started in about 1965. Using some very simple models by today's terms,

GentilP

the Army Corps of Engineers went through a design process to protect the city from a fast-moving category 3. It never was intended to protect against anything more. The levee design was based on that. We now know that because the model was oversimplified it's probably not protective of a fast-moving category 3. It may be protective of a fast-moving category 2.

Why weren't the levees improved in 40 years?

There's a lot of finger pointing going on. We can try to find someone to blame until we're old and gray. What is important for us is to say, "OK, that's in the rear view mirror. What do we do in the future?"

Everybody knew this would happen someday. In 2004, there was an exercise by FEMA to try to consider what would happen if a big storm hit New Orleans.

They dreamed up a mythical hurricane called Pam. Pam was a slow-moving category 3-ish hurricane that was supposed to rumble over the city of New Orleans. It was all done by computer simulation.

During this exercise the outcomes were truly staggering.

There were estimates of as many as 100,000 deaths in New Orleans from a category 3 hurricane direct hit. To be honest, at least in loss of human life, we got off lucky with Katrina.

Of course Katrina's true legacy is the flooding of New Orleans. The damage is absolutely staggering. There's nothing that is on television or that I can show you that comes close to

Hurricane Protection Levee & Floodwall, H U 17.0

New Orleans Ground Elevations

University of New Orleans expressing the extent of damage that took place.

Why did the levees fail?

There were three major levee failures in the city. They all failed before overtopping.

In one case the levee was literally just pushed away. It appears as though it wasn't built correctly. In another case the levee actually sank. The water had gone underneath it and pushed the foundation out and it just went down. There had been a lot of construction very close to the levees from residential and commercial development. A number were heavily planted with trees, things that can affect the structural integrity of the levee.

What about the problems of debris?

The amount of solid waste is almost immeasurable. When we flew over New Orleans I saw between 40,000 and 50,000 refrigerators that had been moved out of homes and were just sitting side by side. That's just one example of the unbelievable solid waste problem.

There has never been a bigger solid waste problem in the United States.

You can think of many of the homes as just a big pile of debris. If you let your mind go for a minute, things that are in the house — the furniture, the books, the clothes, the pots and pans — are all just going to get pushed in.

Not every home is going to be demolished, but there is going to be a tremendous

amount. Over 108,000 houses took on more than four feet of water, all within New Orleans.

That's greater than 50 percent of the houses in New Orleans. That doesn't include the businesses, the restaurants, the doctor's offices.

And the public health issues?

I think they are going to grow. The city is rotting. It's a city that's prone to decay. It's very warm, it's very moist and requires a lot of upkeep. There are a tremendous amount of abandoned buildings, structures that are literally decomposing.

There are real concerns about the contamination of everything that came in contact with floodwaters with regard to pathogens, agents that can cause disease. There's a tremendous amount of fine, particulate matter. By that I'm talking about dust that got washed into the city and is going to become airborne as it dries out.

The people who are working there are going to be in an environment that is potentially hazardous to their health. I think it will be worse once we start to get into the warmer parts of the year. There's a tremendous amount of waste within the city that has the potential to cause all sorts of human health problems.

How is work progressing on the rebuilding of the levees?

The goal is that by the beginning of hurricane season — June 1 — the existing levee system will be at pre-Katrina levels — no improvements, just to get back to where they were.

The Army Corps of Engineers is very involved in the reconstruction of the levees that were damaged or destroyed.

Some of them will be repairable in that time period, some may not.

Some of them were not actually owned by the Army Corps.

There were some private levees that were destroyed. On the far eastern side of New Orleans were earthen levees that were totally eroded. There's just not enough dirt to build those again in the time period that we're talking about.

I don't think we'll see the full levee system at the preKatrina level before the beginning of the hurricane season, but the levees that failed within the city of New Orleans proper, the ones that caused the most flood damage that affected the citizens of New Orleans, those do fall under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers and those are the ones that the focus is on.

What about longer term?

The Army Corps was tasked immediately to restore the levees to the pre-Katrina status. That was considered emergency response. That wasn't visionary thinking.

Now we're in a very different stage. We're starting to say, "If that's all that's done, if we don't expand that level of protection any greater than that, what does that mean for the future of the city? Will people come back to a city that's safe for a category 2 when they know the big one's coming?" >»

From Canal Street to Lake Pontchartrain Shoreline

New Orleans nestles in a bowl, its rim a series of levees protecting its below-sealevel heart. The bowl is sinking. Meanwhile, its low-lying Mississippi Delta buffer is disappearing at about 25 to 30 square miles a year — an area the size of Manhattan. Along this once-nurturing coastline, we harvest onethird of the country's seafood, one-fifth of its oil and one-quarter of its natural gas.

Louisiana has 40 percent of the nation's coastal wetlands and provides wintering grounds for 70 percent of its migratory waterfowl.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

45

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$27,000 - Median income in New Orleans before Katrina $41,000 - National average 140,000 - Population of New Orleans today 600,000 - Population pre-Katrina 250,000 - Projected population in 2008 108,000+ - Number of houses in New Orleans taking on more than 4 feet of water 50% - Percentage of homes taking on more than 4 feet of water 50,000 - Number of homes destroyed 16,000 - New building permits issued since Katrina 83,500 - Number of displaced temporarily living in mobile/trailer homes 10,266 - Number of displaced temporarily living in hotels 1,276 - Number of displaced temporarily living on cruise ships

New Orleans By the Numbers Katrina made landfall at 6:10 a.m. Aug. 29 as a category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 125 mph near Buras-Triumph, La. Storm surges reached 34 feet in Bay St. Louis, Miss., and 13 feet as far away as Mobile, Ala. Katrina Fact Sources: Joseph Hughes, New Orleans Times-Picayune, msnbc.com, hurricane-katrina.org, Brookings Institute

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> >INTERVTEW

People have not been moving to New Orleans. The population has been decreasing since 1965. No Fortune 500 company is headquartered in New Orleans. Would you move your family there?

48

How many people have returned to New Orleans?

There are roughly 140,000 people in the city. The population was over 600,000 before Katrina. The projections are that it will approach 250,000 by September 2008 — less than half the people by 2008. It's a city that's going to be much smaller than it used to be.

Will the conference focus on the entire Gulf Coast region?

Anything that we do will have to be larger in scope, at least from a systems perspective.

Biloxi was just really destroyed, but Biloxi is a different issue. Biloxi was hit like a normal hurricane would hit. It wasn't an infrastructural failure.

It was an example of what a strong storm surge can do. It gives people in that area an understanding of what can happen again.

Are there ways that we could rebuild such that the recovery in a subsequent event would be less expensive, less time consuming? Are we going to be able to build things that can be recovered more readily? I have no idea how many bankruptcies will come from this. I don't think anybody knows.

Biloxi has become a very, very important economic engine for the state of Mississippi.

Gambling generated a half a million dollars a day in terms of state taxes.

Every city is a component of a larger economic system.

Imagine if Atlanta would disappear what it would mean to the whole Southeast. There are these ripple effects that I don't think we've been able to calculate the net impact of.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

This was an amazing storm with amazing consequences on the economy of the United States.

It has displaced 1.2 million people, which is second only to the Dust Bowl. The damage is very difficult to assess in terms of economic effect.

Has New Orleans as we knew it disappeared?

It's never going to be the same. Historically we've seen that. When Galveston was destroyed (by a hurricane in September 1900), Houston was born. Galveston has never come back. It was the largest port on the Gulf Coast. There's a shipyard there now, but it's mainly for repairing ships. It was the largest city on the Gulf Coast.

Certainly a lot of New Orleans has moved to Houston.

Baton Rouge doubled in population (after Katrina) and there's still no vacancy anywhere in Baton Rouge. The future of New Orleans may be Baton Rouge.

Should New Orleans be rebuilt?

At this stage I would say it's not a place where I would feel safe moving my family. There will be a city there. There are people who are willing to take that risk and there is an economic infrastructure like the port and like the French Quarter. Some reports say it may grow back to a quarter of a million people. It's a place where there's a level of risk that to me will cause many, many people to say, "I'm not going to put my investments there."

That level of risk for at least the near term, until memory fades, is going to keep a lot of businesses away.

Can New Orleans look to Amsterdam as a model?

Amsterdam (a city that is also below sea level) underwent a very significant flood in 1953.

A tremendous effort was initiated right away to try to protect Amsterdam in the future — massive infrastructure construction projects. The first step was to construct a moveable storm surge barrier. That went into operation in 1958. The Delta Project was not completed per its original design until 1997.

How long could it take to rebuild New Orleans to that same level of safety?

We can build things that would protect New Orleans in the future. I will probably be long since retired before they're done. So we've got a period of 30-ish years, even if we're aggressive, that says it's not protected. That raises real questions about the future of the city.

Natural disasters tend to accelerate the rate of change.

New Orleans is a city that was economically challenged before.

The median household income in New Orleans before the storm was $27,000. The national average is $41,000.

People have not been moving to New Orleans. The population has been decreasing since 1965. No Fortune 500 company is headquartered in New Orleans.

Would you move your family there? Would you move your company there if I told you realistically it may be 20 to 30 years before New Orleans is protected?

Yes, we can rebuild. But have you built it for anyone who wants to be there? GT

»>>PACESETTERS

50

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

F

or someone who earns his living parking cars, J. Michael Robison is surprisingly interested in keeping people on the move.

Atlanta could too. Match them.

It's a sensible dichotomy actually for Robison, both in his role as chairman and CEO of Atlanta-based Lanier Parking Holdings and his role as chairman of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.

• Build a civil rights museum.

When he's wearing the first hat, he wants people pulling into his parking garages, not steaming in gridlock. When he switches to the second hat, he wants a vibrant Atlanta that people want to visit, where it's easy to travel from one attraction to the next.

"Our business is real estate and parking. Conventions and tourism being the larger of economic drivers in Atlanta, it makes common sense to be involved in the business that has the largest economic impact on the city and commercial real estate values," says Robison, Mgt 97.

Conventions and tourism add $4 billion to metro Atlanta's annual economy and account for 60,000 jobs, Robison says.

He became chair of the ACVB in January, moving into the top chair with a long "to-do" list that includes a pet project.

Robison is chairman and founder of Atlanta Streetcar, a nonprofit organization working to bring the streetcar back to Peachtree Street, running from downtown to Buckhead. The effort met success last November when Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin started a private-public partnership to coordinate the creation of a streetcar for Peachtree Street.

Other ACVB goals include: • Take inventory of what other convention cities offer that

• Work with the city and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to fund a new symphony hall.

• Redevelop Peachtree Road.

• Convince the city to help fund arts and cultural institutions.

• Create a "layover" program with Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to lure airport passengers to town, preferably for several days at a time.

• Become the 10th city worldwide to join the CityPass program that packages six to eight attractions and markets them internationally.

• Retool the state's welcome centers so that they funnel more interstate travelers toward Atlanta attractions.

• Find permanent funding for the Brand Atlanta campaign, a public-private marketing initiative.

Most of that, Robison says, can indeed be completed — or, in the case of the streetcars, at least seriously started — in the two years he'll have on the job.

After all, he squeezes more minutes out of each workday by taking the public transit MARTA train, rather than driving, from his Buckhead home to his Midtown office.

"The underlying value of real estate is more important than the cars we park. Traffic congestion ultimately can have a negative impact on real estate values," Robison says.

And then there's the philosophy that parking is about a lot more than a strip of asphalt marked by two stripes of paint.

"Parking is one component of getting people to and from home and around during the

day," Robison says. His company, instead, offers "one-stop shopping and discounted monthly transit passes to MARTA, we arrange car pool and van pool programs, and we provide shuttle programs."

Frustration with others not seeing the potential in that philosophy led Robison to quit his job as regional marketing manager for a national parking company and strike out on his own. In 1989, while a Tech student, he purchased an 18space parking lot downtown and bought additional lots within a few years.

"It started as a concept because we're in a region mired with gridlock and air pollution," Robison says. "Our commitment to helping people get out of their cars actually helped" build his business, in large part through winning contracts to manage transportation programs that incorporated mass transit.

For example, Lanier operates a shuttle between the Arts Center MARTA station and the new Atlantic Station livework-play development on the former Atlantic Steel mill site near the Tech campus. Lanier also owns that parking garage.

The company also has managed transportation for some of the world's largest events — Olympic games, Super Bowls and Democratic and Republican national conventions.

"Now we control parking for $10 billion in commercial developments at 300 properties in 34 cities across the United States," Robison says.

On weekends, Robison and his wife, Kristy, focus on two-wheel transportation by riding scooters with their children, Julia, 7, and Jack, 4, at Piedmont Park, G T

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

51

â&#x20AC;˘

a sophisticated NASA satellite, to study the planet's atmospheric health

By Neil B. McGahee

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wo years ago, the southern California night briefly turned to day as a Boeing Delta IT rocket roared from its Vandenberg Air Force Base launchpad carrying Aura, the third satellite of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Earth-observing system.

Along with the previously launched Terra, which monitors landmass changes, and Aqua, which studies Earth's hydrological cycles, the three satellites allow scientists to monitor global pollution transport on a daily basis and the relationship between land, water and the atmosphere.

NASA selected a team of Georgia Tech researchers — Rong Fu, Yuanlong Hu, Yuhang Wang, Derek Cunnold and Greg Huey — from the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences to analyze Aura's data and answer three questions: • How is the climate changing?

• Is Earth's ozone layer recovering?

• Is air quality getting worse?

A month later, the Tech researchers were among to see the scientific data that arrived from space.

"The data received at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was sent directly to us," Fu says. "We were able to begin our research focusing on high-altitude transport of water vapor — the most prevalent of all greenhouse gases and a key suspect in global warming.

"We found evidence that high-altitude thunderstorms can transport a large percentage of water vapor and a significant amount of carbon monoxide into the stratosphere over the Tibetan Plateau region."

How is the climate changing? he researchers found the vapor above the Tibetan Plateau, a mountainous area encompassing China, Tibet and northern India, was rapidly heating as it absorbed more sun radiation, creating what meteorologists call a convergence.

"Rising subtropical air rushes into the troposphere bringing particles, including water vapor and pollutants," Hu says.

"As the air mass increases, it slows and the air in the rear catches up or converges. To avoid more compression, the air moves vertically, transferring the polluted air to the stratosphere.

"Stratospheric currents move horizontally so water vapor is transported to the polar regions, where it undergoes a chemical reaction that results in ozone depletion."

Hu says the amount of stratospheric water vapor has

T

1979 1982

With the banning of ozone-destructive chemicals, the Earth's protective layer is slowly recovering. decreased since 2000, but "what is up there now will still be around in 40 years."

Is the ozone layer recovering? o determine if the ozone layer is recovering, Cunnold must first go to the stratosphere. "We use Aura to measure the ozone content in the stratosphere," he says. "Then we calculate total atmospheric ozone. When you subtract stratospheric ozone from the ozone in the total atmosphere, you end up with a measurement of tropospheric ozone.

"It's a little early to identify trends, but our findings show the ozone layer is slowly recovering due to the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which banned the use of chlorofluor-

T

ocarbons such as spray can propellants or refrigeration gases."

Cunnold says although ozone makes up a tiny fraction of the stratosphere, it is crucial for life on Earth, shielding the surface from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. But it is very unstable and reacts easily with naturally occurring as well as human-made compounds that affect its ability to absorb ultraviolet rays. If the shield weakens, people become more susceptible to health problems like skin cancer, cataracts and compromised immune systems. Aura enables researchers to monitor stratospheric ozone levels and determine the total amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth. >Âť

On the cutting-edge of climate research, Georgia Tech scientists, left to right, Yuhang Wang, Yuanlong Hu, Derek Cunnold, Greg Huey and Hong Fu use data from NASA's Aura satellite to study the atmosphere.

Photo: Caroline Joe

^

If global warming continues, marginal areas may be uninhabitable by the year 2100.

Is air quality getting worse? * 7 hen greenhouse gases undergo changes, it can upset . the atmosphere's heat balance and alter the climate, so it is essential to measure the gases in order to understand climate change, Hu says.

"The atmosphere has no boundaries, so pollution can move great distances across oceans and continents," Hu says.

"Air quality has degraded due to surges in population and industry, like that occurring in China and India, and become a global health issue."

Hu says Aura 1 can explore the 0

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atmosphere s natural Aura — Latin for breeze — will monitor variations as well as global pollution production and transport human activity to with unprecedented spatial resolution. better ~changes <, d b e t tpredict er r Auras measurements offer insights into ° on Earth. o n Eartn how climate changes influence the recov"Surface temperery of Earth s protective stratospheric "Surface temperature and greenhouse ozone layer. The satellite carries four ature and greenhouse instruments: a High Resolution Dynamics gases trap infrared umu ouunuw. MIMUM

ciuuvc nming

measurements of the stratosphere.

Ozone Monitoring Instrument. Microwave Limb Sounder and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer. NASA calls the results "nothing short of astounding."

radiation that would

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Pe t0 P ' creating the greenhouse effect," H u says. "As industrial and agricultural emissions increase, trapped pollutants degrade air quality causing climate change, especially global warming." s

ace

Indeed, statistics from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration show the lower troposphere temperature increased more in the past century than in the past 1,000 years.

"We are emitting a lot more pollutants than we did

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

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A satellite descends into the thermal vacuum lest chamber during the production stage at the Northrop Grumman Space Technology facility.

before," Hu says. "But fortunately we have better technology that can minimize the effects."

Fu says she is very concerned about the atmospheric health of the planet. "If the amount of water vapor continues to increase in the stratosphere, it will speed ozone destruction, causing further global warming and notable changes in subtropical climates," she says. "Areas that are marginally habitable now will become uninhabitable if conditions worsen.

"We're already seeing changes in North and South America. In Brazil, the Amazon forest is becoming a growfast, die-fast forest and in the southeastern United States, climate models suggest that some areas might become uninhabitable by the end of this century."

Fu says while it is possible to modify weather through environmental engineering, artificial changes often result in unanticipated consequences.

"We can't really change the behavior of weather," Fu says. "We must change people's behavior." GT

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G e o r g i a T e c h Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

57

>>>PACESETTERS

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Planet Protector Atmosphere authority helps write Earth's instruction manual

By Nicole Branan Photo: Sammy Dallal

I

t's been almost two decades since Dan Albritton first found himself in Antarctica collecting samples of air and ice particles high above the sky at the loneliest place on the globe. The recent discovery that a massive hole had appeared in the Earth's protective ozone layer, letting harmful ultraviolet radiation reach the planet's surface, had put a sudden urgency on uncovering what caused the small, fragile molecules called ozone to vanish.

Today he looks back with a contented smile on his face. "The ozone layer will show signs of recovery —- the amount of ozonedepleting chemicals in the atmosphere is declining," he says.

Albritton, EE 59, MS Phys 63,

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

PhD Phys 67, directed the Aeronomy Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo., from 1986 until his retirement in March.

During two international expeditions to Antarctica in the late '80s and early '90s Albritton and his colleagues confirmed that human-made chlorofluorocarbons — chemicals widely used as spray can propellants and refrigeration materials — caused the seasonal gap in the invisible shield functioning as the Earth's sunscreen.

Aeronomy laboratory researchers discovered why the ozone molecules above the only continent that had never been the

home of spray cans or refrigerators were so particularly vulnerable to CFCs. Their findings led to substantial amendments of the Montreal Protocol, an unprecedented international agreement established in the mid-1980s to protect the ozone layer, and were the reason for the CFC phaseout.

"The appearance of the ozone hole was a very dramatic phenomenon and the world community understood that it needed to react," Albritton says.

When CFCs and other ozone-degrading chemicals are emitted, they mix with oxygen, nitrogen and the remaining trace compounds of the atmosphere and eventually rise to the stratosphere, the region between 15

Dan Albritton helped communicate the threat of the growing hole in the ozone and its implications for life on Ear and 30 kilometers above the Earth's surface. Reaction of CFCs with sunlight results in destruction of ozone molecules, which causes higher levels of UV radiation, leading to increased numbers of skin cancers and cataracts.

"In Antarctica, the coldest place on the planet, ice particles form spontaneously in the stratosphere. It is the surface of these ice particles that accelerates the ozone destruction by CFCs," Albritton explains.

But it was not only the scientist but also the communicator Albritton who paved the way from science to policy, promoting international cooperation to address the problem that threatened the health of the entire planet.

For the past 20 years, Albritton has been at the forefront of the science-policy interface, communicating scientific findings to national and global decision makers, such as the United Nations and the U.S. Congress.

The Montreal Protocol has been credited with establishing a model for science-policy development.

Albritton's accomplishments have been recognized with numerous awards and honors. Last September, he received the 2005 Vienna Convention Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Protection of the Ozone Layer from the United Nations Environmental Programme and the World Meteorological Organization.

"The story of the ozone layer

is a great success story. The scientific community discovered an environmental issue and, based on the scientific input, policy-makers around the world made decisions that are leading to the repair of the issue," Albritton says.

Other climate concerns such as global warming will not be as easy to solve, he cautions.

"The move out of CFCs didn't wreck society because industry was able to replace them with ozone-friendly, affordable chemicals. There is no easy way out of greenhouse gases," he says.

"When it comes to solving the issue of global warming, there is no silver bullet. Many experts believe that we will likely need a basket of approaches such as

fuel economy, changes of lifestyle and alternative sources of energy.

After all, we didn't get an instruction manual with this planet.

Instead, we are the ones writing it â&#x20AC;&#x201D; page by page."

Albritton's career path that led him to become one of the world's foremost atmospheric scientists started when he left Georgia Tech in 1967 for a postdoc position at NOAA in the same blue Volkswagen Beetle he drives to this day.

After nearly 40 years at NOAA, the newly retired Albritton is now devoting time to his hobby, woodworking. "My books are all over the place. I am planning to make some nice bookcases for them." G T

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

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2006

SUNTRUST

In the spring of 1931, Bobby Dodd, former All-American quarterback at Tennessee, "filled the last gap" and joined the Georgia Tech coaching staff. "Dodd's pleasing personality and likable countenance quickly won over the entire squad's friendship," the alumni magazine reported. Recalling his gridiron exploits, it added, "He was one of the coolest, flashiest, smartest and best quarterbacks ever produced in Dixie" and "is bound to make Tech a valuable and very capable backfield coach." After being named head football coach in 1945, Dodd went on to become a coaching legend.

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Graduates attending commencement ; ceremonies at the Fox Theatre in June 1956 may have scratched their heads or had a chuckle as they entered.

The marquee outside read "The Searchers." While promoting the current feature attraction, it was perhaps apropos for the occasion, especially since this was Tech's first class to graduate women â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Shirley Clements and Diane Michel.

Inside the theater, graduates were greeted with a big sign advertising the coming attraction: "The Man Who Knew Too Much."

I

Astronaut John Young, AE 52, commanded the first space shuttle launched in April 1981, inaugurating a new era in space technology and exploration. Young called it "a milestone technological accomplishment" and NASA called the shuttle "a true aerospace vehicle. It takes off like a rocket, maneuvers in Earth orbit like a spacecraft and lands like an airplane." GT Photo: Neil B. McGahee

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

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Google News Maker Krishna Bharat does the math behind the headlines

By Kimberly Link-Wills Photo: Gary Meek

K

rishna Bharat is the scientist

international interest generated by

behind the headlines of

an event as a "news seismo-

point I had one user. That was

Google News. He started the

graph."

me,"

award-winning Internet service in 2001.

"Google News is the realization of this idea that computers

Bharat, PhD 96, calls Google,

can A — automatically find news together to form story clusters on

acclaim, including the World

project on steroids." Within six

a particular topic; C — figure out

Technology Award for media, it

years the Internet upstart had

how important the story is," he

also has brought him more algo-

become a $50 billion company

says.

rithmic problems to solve.

"Because computers can

"Spamming is a martial art.

Every time we come up with

bring in multiple points of view, it

something, spammers try to outwit

years? Lots of interesting technolo-

gives you a broad picture of

us," Bharat says. "Money follows

gy came about," says Bharat, who

what's happening and it's also

users. There's a lot of money in

proved to be unbiased."

spamming Google, probably a

He goes on to say something the average Joe Surfer never even considers: "Web search is still a very hard algorithmic problem."

Before Google News became "a flourishing service," Bharat took a sabbatical from his regular duties

$40 billion industry. With that kind

able around the globe until 2002

of money they can afford to hire

but was immediately recognized

PhDs.

as a force with which to be reck-

"This is an arms race. The

oned. Online Journalism Review

smarter you get, the smarter they

named it the Best New Friend of

get. There are actually spam tuto-

the Year. A year later, Google

rials," he says. "People have

News beat BBC to win the 2003

found ways to attack us. We have

Webby Award.

to constantly improve our tech-

Bharat says many journalists initially were skeptical of the Internet news provider.

"When we first launched, edi-

niques to fight spam."

Today there are 22 regional editions of Google News in 10 languages. After the service was

tors around the world were sur-

firmly established, Bharat moved

to solve some of those algorithmic

prised and a bit shocked. They

on to launch Google's Indian

problems so he could take his idea

thought we were trying to do what

office, which he directed for a

to the masses.

they were doing. The truth is we

year and a half before returning to

actually use their judgment to

the company's headquarters in

"The first question was: Can computers rank news articles?

compute an aggregate. Then they

Mountain View, Calif., last year to

News articles are very different

turned around and said, 'This is

focus on new algorithmic chal-

from Web pages. They are in real

actually a very useful tool for us.'

lenges.

time. As news happens, news arti-

Many journalists sign up for news

cles appear on the Web, so finding

alerts that tell them when some-

them is some of the challenge. An

thing has happened to the topic

Bharat says. "Personalized

article can be very important even

that they're tracking."

Google News watches your news-

if it came from a not-so-famous source. Ultimately you have to

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Google News has brought Bharat

assemble the news together and

Google News wasn't avail-

ichtrgti

While the popularity of

example of a graduate student

"What happened in those six

mm j tmmk i

of users."

articles on the Web; B — put them

tising revenue.

9 of Hm ¥ o *

he says, smiling. "Now

Google News has literally millions

launched in late 1998, "a classic

and a world leader in Web adver-

m ow m.ma*m.9

Tech student in 1994. "At that

Although he studied computer science, Bharat has long been

In January, Google began offering personalized news,

surfing history and recommends content to you."

understand the importance of the

interested in journalism and devel-

underlying story," says Bharat, who

oped an early interactive newspa-

News makes it even easier to fol-

refers to the local, national and

per using Java while a Georgia

low Bharat's career, G T

This latest addition to Google

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

63

Poetic Lice Poetry is compressed emotions, says alumnus Bruce McEver, who explains th„. chairs in poetry 'to enrich the lives and education of Tech students'and inspire an appreciation for self-expression

By Gary Goettling Photography: Gary Mee

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n the introduction to "Full Horizon," Georgia Tech professor Thomas Lux wrote of the book's author, H. Bruce McEver, "Wherever he goes, poetry goes with him." It also can be said that McEver leaves poetry wherever he's been — most notably at Tech, where he endowed a visiting chair in writing at the Ivan Allen College's School of Literature, Communication and Culture, "When I was a student, you couldn't take electives in anything but engineering," says the Atlanta native and 1966 industrial engineering graduate. "We just didn't have elec-

tives for a writer, although there were some really great professors who taught me a lot."

One of those professors was James Dean Young, who taught English at Tech for nearly three decades. He inspired in McEver a love of language and an appreciation for selfexpression through writing. Several years after graduation, when McEver was already ensconced in a business career in New >»

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Alumnus Bruce McEver reads selections from his critically praised work "Full Horizon" to a packed house on campus. McEver says, "Really good poetry gets under your skin."

65

What is unusual, Lux notes, is that Tech supports two poetry chairs.'

York City, the nascent curiosity raised in Young's English class prompted McEver to enroll in a poetry writing workshop at the New School in Manhattan. Thirty years later, he's still writing poetry.

"Poetry is compressed emotions," McEver says. "You're trying to transfer an emotional experience or feeling. It takes you someplace you haven't been before or it makes you walk in somebody else's shoes and see things from a different point of view. It's the only art form that can express an interior landscape, so really good poetry gets under your skin. It makes you think."

McEver's writing has drawn critical praise in literary circles. In addition to a collection of poems published last year in "Full Horizon," McEver's work has appeared in several literary magazines, including The Courtland Review, Ploughshares, The Berkshire Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Atlanta Review, The Connecticut River Review and Westview.

In 2001, he endowed the writing chair at Tech "to enrich the lives and education of Tech students because they're really bright people and they deserve more," explains McEver, who envisioned the position as an intellectual catalyst or "yeast," to use his word, for aspiring writers. "The visiting chair is not a permanent chair so you keep getting different people and different ideas."

The rotating chairs teach poetry writing classes, conduct readings, hold poetry workshops for the public and visit area high schools as part of a community outreach program.

The first professor to visit Tech through McEver's program was Lux, a poet from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Lux and McEver had struck up a friendship several years earlier at the 92nd Street YMCA in New York, where McEver had signed up for one of Lux's poetry classes.

Not long after Lux arrived on campus, the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Jr. chair in poetry was set up by the longtime electrical engineering professor and former interim Tech president. Lux was offered the job.

"I really liked Georgia Tech and the students," Lux says. "I also liked Sarah Lawrence, where I had been teaching for so long. When

66

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

my semester as a McEver professor was over, I went back to New York to think about the job at Tech, and I decided to accept it. I came back in 2002, so this is my fourth year here."

The institutional cultural differences between a small liberal arts college up north and a major technological institute in the Deep South aren't as great or important as one might think, adds Lux, who also directs the McEver chair program with assistance from Ginger Murchison, associate director of the Poetry at Tech program.

"Once you're in the classroom, the students aren't all that much different," he says. "At Sarah Lawrence they might have more tattoos or more body piercings, but essentially they're the same age and they're going through the same things as Tech students. They want to express themselves. They want to articulate feelings."

What is unusual, he notes, is that Tech supports two poetry chairs. "There are maybe only 25 or 30 poetry chairs in the whole country," Lux says. "I don't know of any other college or university that has two of them."

By all accounts, the activities and classroom offerings known collectively as Poetry at Tech enjoy tremendous popularity. Readings given

by Lux, visiting poets and local writers routinely draw hundreds of students, according to the professor. A reading this past February by the 2006 McEver chairs, Chard deNiord and Kurtis Lamkin, attracted a standing-room-only crowd to Clary Theater. McEver himself also participated. In April, a trio of physician-poets will read from their writings at the Academy of Medicine in an event co-sponsored by Tech and the Georgia Cancer Coalition.

"It's amazing what Tom has done," McEver says. "It's beyond my wildest expectations."

For members of an older generation whose attitude toward poetry was formed during high school literature classes, the popularity of the art at Tech may be surprising.

"I hated poetry in high school," Lux confesses, "although secretly I was beginning to be drawn to it. Poetry used to be taught as if it were some kind of riddle to decipher. You didn't read poetry for the pleasure of the language or how it moved you or what it told you about

March

"There are maybe only 25 or 30 poetry chairs in the whole country." is the reluctant month when winter wanes over Canaan mountain and the ice shelf looses its grip, breaking up to glide a melt-swollen river.

Frozen footprints are mud by midday, but errant cold rains and snow keep overcoats reserved on the peg.

The days are longer when the vernal equinox is crossed, sure and impersonal as multiplication tables and, somewhere in the Yucatan, the feathered serpent's shadow slides down the great pyramid.

Here, first bulb's fingers seek sun, the sap buckets are set. willow branches quicken and bronze, and in the thawed swamp, a primordial chorus of spring peepers start.

While on that gray mountain, a bear, hungry from hibernation, crawls from a rocky crevice, comes to terms with the bright morning, and gets on with finding his breakfast — Bruce McEver

being alive. You read to solve it like you solve an algebraic equation, and that made a lot of people feel stupid."

For the most part, the way poetry is taught has changed greatly over the past decade or two, says Lux, contributing to its acceptance on North Avenue and in society generally. The key is accessibility — the term McEver uses to describe the visceral, subjective connection between writer and reader. In other words, poetry speaks for itself, for better or worse.

"The more people are exposed to it, the more they realize how accessible it can be," McEver says. "That's the purpose of the writing chairs and the Poetry at Tech program. There's a poet for everyone — more than one poet for everyone — if you read around."

M

cEver's reading time is squeezed between his poetry writing and his day job as chairman of Berkshire Capital Corp., a company he founded in 1983 to provide independent merger, acquisition and strategic advisory services for investment managers and securities firms.

Previously he served as the assistant to the chairman of Paine Webber Group for mergers and acquisitions. He was formerly a vice president for mergers and acquisitions with Blyth Eastman Dillon. McEver began his career as a venture capital analyst at Bessemer Securities and was an assistant vice president of corporate finance at Chemical Bank.

After graduating from Tech, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Navy and served on the staff of the assistant secretary of defense.

McEver, who earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, maintains close ties to the Institute not only through the poetry program but as a board member of the Georgia Tech Foundation.

He resides in Salisbury, Conn., on a farm his late opera singer wife, Georgia, whimsically dubbed Utopia Ltd., after the Gilbert and Sullivan opera of the same name.

McEver admits that the enormous amount of time he devotes to his careers in poetry and finance makes life hectic at times, "but I like having that balance. I could do one or the other full time, but it might get a little dull." GT Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

67

>>>RESEARCHRl \ II W

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Efficient Chemistry Postdoctoral researcher Nam Phan, left, and graduate student Christopher Gill study the separation of magnetic nanoparticle catalysts from polymeric resin catalysts. Using the unique properties of new nanometer-scale magnetic particles, Georgia Tech researchers have for the first time separated for reuse two different catalysts from a multistep chemical reaction done in a single vessel. The technique could lead to more efficient production of specialty chemicals â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and a reduction in waste normally produced by separation processes. Explains associate professor Christopher Jones, "By doing the reactions in a single vessel, we can cut out two or three separation steps to provide both an economic advantage and an environmentally benign process." Separations using magnetic catalysts have been limited by a tendency of the nanoparticles to clump together because of their magnetic attraction for one another. The clumping dramatically reduces their catalytic activity. To overcome this problem, the Tech researchers used nanometer-scale magnetic particles that are so small they no longer exhibit a net magnetic attraction. Jones envisions the new process being used in the specialty chemical and pharmaceutical industries that produce relatively small volumes of high-value chemicals. >Âť Photo: Gary Meek

Georgia Tech Alumni Mncjn/ino â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

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Optical-Wireless Convergence Georgia Tech telecommunications researchers have demonstrated a novel communications network design that would provide both ultra-highspeed wireless and wired access services from the same signals carried on a single optical fiber. The new hybrid system could allow dual wired/wireless transmission of the same content such as high-definition television, data and voice up to 100 times faster than current networks.

The new architecture would reduce the cost of providing dramatically improved service to conference centers, airports, hotels, shopping malls â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and ultimately to homes and small offices.

"The same services would be provided to customers who would either plug into the wired connection in the wall or access the same information through a wireless system," explains Tech professor Gee-Kung Chang of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "In an airport, for instance, a traveler could watch a movie, talk to a friend and work interactively through a wireless system or by plugging into the wall." The optical-wireless access network envisioned by Chang and his colleagues would connect to existing optical fiber networks that serve much of the nation. GT Photo: Gary Meek

Entertainment Transfer

By Karen Hill Photo: Caroline Joe

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

f \ able is so last j ^ 1 century, rhat's ^L % • • why Turner • Broadcasting System Wk has charged David Rudolph with finding the company's future in an emerging world of broadband, cellular and wireless transmissions.

For the last year, m Rudolph, IE 96, has worked as Turner's sen™ ior vice president for new product development, building a staff of three to more than 20. It's not accidental, he says, that the two new prod^ ucts launched so far • ^ come to consumers ^ ^ ^ through their

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computers, not their televisions.

"For the most part, there are probably enough TV networks. We have a good chunk, and they're successful, but the growth in that is limited," Rudolph says. "We're platform agnostic for where products go now."

Both new products are sold by subscription. GameTap rolled out in October and CNN Pipeline in December.

GameTap lets people pick from among 400 video games no longer sold in stores and play them as much as they want for $14.95 a month.

"Gaming promotes itself as having a box office as large as the movies, both $10 billion, and that's true. But what they don't point out is that only 25 percent of movie box office" actually comes from theater ticket sales, Rudolph says. "There is a life after box office for movies," including DVD rentals and sales. i The other new product, CNN I Pipeline, feeds video on demand — a stream of live, continuous coverage of breaking events — into subscribers' computers for $25 a year.

Pipeline is a logical, if techni^F^"' ^H cally difficult, extension of CNN's position as a leading news Internet site, Rudolph says. wm "People are doing more and more video, taking packages and clips from TV — the archive stuff.

We realized no one was doing live video," he says.

The target market for CNN ••'•'.""'.",.••"'••' '• .' .•'".:' •'••'mi. Pipeline, Rudolph says, is the atwork crowd that checks Web sites for news periodically throughout the day. m "If you go to CNN.com, you can see two sentences of breaking news crawl across the bottom of the page. If you wait 10 minutes, you'll get three or four paragraphs about the event," Rudolph says. "If you go to Pipeline, you

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get instant gratification."

Rudolph, from Clarksville, Tenn., got his foot in the door at Turner while a student at Tech.

The President's Scholar asked a company executive, a friend of his father, to hire him for a co-op job ----- even though Turner didn't offer co-op jobs.

The executive agreed, but after that stint, Rudolph would have to convince others in the company to keep him on.

"I was forced to go out and network, sell myself. I looked at every single person in the company as someone who could possibly employ me, from the data entry clerk to Ted Turner, anyone willing to take me on for $8 an hour," Rudolph says.

He worked in payroll and in sports production and began climbing the ladder — quickly.

Before moving to his current job, Rudolph conceived, built and ran the Turner South channel. TBS recently sold it for $375 million.

"Certainly there's a sense of pride that I helped build something that was sold for an amount that was staggering to me. And certainly there's some sadness.

The team is still largely in place there; we built that thing from scratch together. To know it's going to have an impact on them, that's tough to wrestle with," he says.

But now, Rudolph's on to the next new thing — figuring out how to harness what he believes will be the inevitable fusion of your TV set and your computer.

"Our worlds between media and technology have been colliding for a while and they're only going to intersect more," Rudolph says. "You know, I used to get the question all the time: 'What's a guy from Tech doing at Turner?' I haven't heard that for a while.

Technology's going to play a much, much larger role in our industry." GT

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

73

Limited Edition Deluxe

BABY BUZZ CLUB The Georgia Tech Alumni Association is pleased to introduce the Deluxe Baby Buzz Club.

This limited edition gift has all of the original Baby Buzz favorites, plus a wonderful CD featuring original lullabies a n d a piece entitled "Georgia Tech Medley."

Deluxe Baby Buzz includes: Canvas Bag Buzz Hooded Towel GT Rattle Buzz Bib Sipper Cup, Maxwell's Lullabies — Special GT Edition' * While supplies last

Baby Buzz includes: Canvas Bag Buzz Hooded Towel GT Rattle Buzz Bib Sipper Cup Enroll by returning the order form and your check for $49.95 + 8% tax (in Georgia only) and $6.00 Shipping and handling made payable to

Georgia Tech Alumni Association 190 North Avenue, NW Atlanta, GA 30313

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G e o r g i a T e c h Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

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G e o r g i a T e c h Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

FACULTYPROFILE>>>

Dn Ludicrous Professor gives humor circuit a nerd's-eue view of comedy

By Gary Goettling Photos: Gary Meek

W

hen Peter J. "Pete" Ludovice was a graduate student in the 1980s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there was a special name for women on campus.

"We called them visitors," he deadpans.

An associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Georgia Tech, Ludovice's irreverent observational humor has been his trademark among students for the past dozen years.

Over the past two years, he has sought a wider audience for his "nerd comedy" as a stand-up comic at nightclubs and corporate meetings. This second career has earned the professor a special name of his own: Dr. Ludicrous, a stage name purportedly bestowed by students over unrealistic expectations on a statistics test.

"Teaching and comedy go hand in hand," Ludovice explains. "I like to teach, and I think anyone who enjoys teaching is probably also a natural-born ham."

It also could be argued that anyone who devotes research time to computer simulation to elucidate the relationship between atomiclevel structure and the properties of synthetic and biological macromolecules, as Ludovice does, needs a good laugh now and then.

Ludovice's dozens of performances include headlining at annual meetings of the American Chemical Society and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and stints at clubs throughout the Southeast, including the Punchline in Sandy Springs, Ga. He is a regular at the monthly comedy show at the Academy Theater in Avondale Estates, Ga., and at The Funny Farm Comedy Club in Koswell, Ga. Ludovice is a fixture on Georgia Tech stages as well, performing at campus events such as FASET and hosting the "Funny Girls: Women of Atlanta Comedy" show at the

Student Center. He is working on a lecture for incoming President's Scholars titled "Your Professor: Human or Alien Spawn?"

"You scratch and claw for every single job you get," he notes. "I send out demo tapes and press packets, and I work with local bookers in Florida and North Carolina."

One of Ludovice's best-known routines is called "Pocket Protectors and Other Fashion Statements" — despite the fact that pocket protectors have pretty much gone the way of slide rules.

"There's only one faculty member at Georgia Tech who wears them: Jim Powers in organic chemistry," Ludovice says. "The first time I used one in my act, 1 borrowed one from him because I didn't have any of my own. 1 actually have to special order them."

He adds wistfully, "When I worked for IBM in San Jose, California, they had bins of them in the office supply closet."

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1984 graduate of the University of Illinois, Ludovice received his doctorate from MIT — which he says stands for "Mutants In Training" — in 1989. Postdoctoral positions at IBM, NASA and Eidgenossische Technische HochschuleZurich preceded his return to academia.

Ludovice says his second career as a stand-up comic represents a midlife crisis compromise with his wife, Jennifer. "It was either this or a motorcycle."

As one might expect, some of his most receptive audiences are fellow chemical engineers, who, according to Ludovice, "can't really fix anything. All we can do is write differential equations to explain why the pipes burst and then hopefully keep from giving ourselves a hickey with the wet/dry vac when we clean up the mess."

Although self-deprecating nerd humor is his stock-in-trade, Ludovice will perform just about anywhere. In fact, one of the most > » Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

77

>>>FACULTYPROFILE

Ludovice loves his alter ego as a stand-up comedian. But that doesn't mean'Tm going to quit my day job anytime soon." difficult aspects of stage comedy is picking the right material for the audience. He learned that tough lesson while performing at Under the Couch, a student-run cafe in the basement of the Couch Building.

"I got up and told a George Bush joke," he recalls two years after the fact. "It was a relatively innocuous joke. It wasn't even all that insulting. And I got booed by 19-year-old college students — that's just not supposed to happen!

"Comics are going to make fun of whoever is in power, and right now the Republicans are in power," he says. "I'd write jokes about the Democrats' platform and policies — if they actually had some."

A

nother time, at a club in St. Augustine, Fla., "some guy from Georgia wanted to kick my butt in the parking lot because I was telling jokes about Georgia," Ludovice says, still bewildered by the encounter. "Heck, I like living in Georgia."

But such instances are increasingly rare as experience teaches Ludovice how to accurately gauge his audience.

His "Pocket Protectors" routine went over well with the MIT Alumni Club of Atlanta, but a week later at Gypsy's in St. Augustine, he found a totally different audience. "You can't tell any nerd jokes. You can't

78

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2006

say you're a professor or even a chemical engineer because sometimes they turn hostile on you.

"You need to get the audience on your side," he adds. "If the audience thinks of you as snooty and condescending, they don't always get on your side."

Thick skin is a prerequisite for a comedian, Ludovice observes, as well as for professors.

"As a comic you get immediate feedback from the audience, and sometimes some people don't find part of your act particularly amusing," he says. "That's not so bad considering that when you send in a paper or a proposal, the reviewers for the paper or the reviewers for the funding agency assemble their criticism in writing. Your editor or your program director puts it all together and mails it to you, then calls to say, 'Did you get all the horrible things people said about you?'

There's a parallel, so maybe bombing on stage isn't as bad as sending something to the National Institutes of Health."

Ludovice keeps polishing and delivering his comedy wherever there's a stage and a microphone, hoping for the day he'll get a call from Exxon or DuPont asking him to perform at their shareholders meeting. But in the meantime, he says, "I'm not going to quit my day job anytime soon." GT

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2006

79

>>>PHOTOFINISH

Improvisational Robot

J

Haile, a robot, catches the beat â&#x20AC;&#x201D; with a little help from graduate student Scott Driscoll and Gil Weinberg, assistant professor and director of music technology. Weinberg says the robot percussionist "can listen to live players, analyze their music in real tim the pro"

analysis to play back in an improvisational manner" through computational power and numerical algorithms. The world premiere of "Jan'aa," an interactive jam session integrating Haile into a Middle Eastern drum circle, was staged in Jerusalem on March 25. GT

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