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TECH ALUMNI FEATURED IN FORBES '30 UNDER 30' Top business magazine singled out seven of the Institute's brightest young graduates. The Forbes "30 Under 30" list for 2016 features “600 of the brightest young entrepreneurs, breakout talents and change agents in 20 different sectors.” And Tech alumni are featured in six categories: Science; Manufacturing and Industry; Retail and Commerce; Energy; Marketing and Advertising; and Healthcare. Georgia Tech also gets a shout out in Forbes’ writeup of entrepreneur Jewel Burks, who got her company PartPic off the ground with the help of Georgia Tech programmers. Read more about what these amazing young alumni are doing: Josh Allen, Chem 08: Allen is VP of research and development for Oncoceutics. Allen discovered a tumorfighting agent as a PhD student that is using to develop a drug to kill cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact. Allen Chang, BME 08: Chang is the co-founder o f Ve r t e r a S p i n e , a company that grows a porous material similar to bone that can be used for implants. Vertera Spine will be the first
company to FDA-clear, manufacture and implant a surface porous synthetic bone in humans. The company has attracted $2 million in funding to date. Alec Manfre, ME 11: Manfre is CEO and cofounder of Bractlet, a company that uses specialized technology to determine equipmentlevel data on electrical usage to help building and business owners cut their energy costs. Bractlet has helped customers cut costs by 35 percent after identifying wasteful energy usage. Candace Mitchell, CS 11: Mitchell is the co-founder of Techturized, Inc., a company that’s using science to revolutionize hair care for women of color. An app called Myavana analyzes a customer’s hair sample and makes custom recommendations on which products will work best for her individual hair type. Lujendra Ojha, PhD 16: Ojha noticed unusual geologic features on Mars that appeared similar to the streaks that
would be left by running water on Earth. His research led to NASA’s big announcement last year that flowing water had been discovered on the Red Planet. Paris Rouzati, BA 13: Rouzati is the head of marketing for About. me, a platform for personal webpages. She’s responsible for promotion, social media, and strategic partnerships and specializes in Millennial and Gen Z user behavior. At Tech, Rouzati helped launch a digital magazine that reached an audience of more than 200,000 women. Emily Woods, ME 10: Woods co-founded Sanivation, which developed the first solar treatment method for human waste. Woods, who is now a sanitation engineer in Kenya, designed a way to convert feces into a sustainable solid fuel. She’s raised more than $500,000 in grants to expand Sanivation’s services.
Ryan Gravel Chosen to Envision the Future of Atlanta Ryan Gravel, Arch 95, M Arch and M CRP 99, has been chosen to help shape Atlanta’s future. Mayor Kasim Reed selected Gravel to head up the Atlanta City Design Project, an undertaking aimed at envisioning what the city will look like in decades to come, as well as guide future decisions on the growth and development of the city. “Pioneering a project that will shape 0 9 0
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all the future planning decisions and that promotes strategic development in Atlanta is my dream job,” Gravel says. While a master’s student at Georgia Tech, Gravel had an idea to take unused, overgrown railroad corridors and convert them into a system of parks, transit and trails connecting Atlanta neighborhoods. His grad school thesis evolved into what is now the Atlanta BeltLine.
“It’s a community revitalization project, it’s an economic development project, it’s a public health project,” Gravel says. “It does all of those things, so it brings in a lot of people wanting the same thing. It brings a lot of constituencies together.” Gravel and the Atlanta City Design Project will begin meeting and planning this summer.