Research initiatives are the smallest scale and shortest duration projects funded by IMS. They focus on early-stage visioning and team building through workshops and related activities.
Autonomous Research for Materials
This initiative aims to combine machine learning/AI, high-throughput computing, computational chemistry, and experimental materials synthesis and characterization to accelerate material discovery.
Leads: Mark Losego, Shreyas Kousik
Catalysis and Separations
This initiative is working to bring faculty together who are working on materials-related issues aimed at decarbonizing industrial separations and catalysis, identifying the bottlenecks for new materials, and assessing their long-term impacts.
Lead: Marta Hatzell
Extreme Environments
This initiative aims to manage unpredictability and risk associated with materials in extreme environments through advancing the engineering of materials.
Lead: Richard Neu
Georgia Tech Quantum Alliance (GTQA)
GTQA seeks to pave the way towards solving problems in optimization, cryptography, and artificial intelligence and allow science and engineering to better understand matter, material systems and the electronic state of quantum many-body systems.
Leads: Martin Mourigal, Zhigang Jiang
Macromolecular Materials at Biotic and Abiotic Interfaces
This initiative will bring together experimental and computational engineers and scientists focused on fundamental studies of macromolecular systems to identify pathways to novel compositions, structures, synthesis, and characterization approaches to designing and implementing macromolecular materials.
Lead: Valeria Milam
Matter and Information
This initiative aims to investigate connections between physical and information processes, including physical processes of learning, algorithms tailored to noisy computing devices, and statistical approaches for scientific computing.
Lead: Florian Schaefer
Mechanical Metamaterials
This initiative aims to bring faculty together to develop, characterize, and apply metamaterials — those with programmed structures above the atomic scale, blurring the line between material and machine. They can reveal fundamentally new physics while also incorporating new functionality for flexibility, strength, and intelligent processing of mechanical force and energy.
Lead: Zeb Rocklin
Microscale Thermal Tech for Sustainability
This initiative brings together human thermal perception, design futuring, and systemic sustainability evaluation for climate change resilience.
Leads: Noura Howell, Joe Bozeman
Solar Energy Harvesting and Conversion
This initiative is working to integrate photovoltaic, photodetectors, and related devices into materials-related research; energize research in these areas; and consolidate the expertise of the many research groups working on or around photovoltaics/ photodetectors.
Lead: Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena
Sports, Research, Innovation, and Technology
Georgia Tech's SPRINT initiative bridges the university's academic research community with its Athletics Association to advance sports-related research, innovation, and technology, aiming to make Atlanta a global leader in these fields.
Lead: Jud Ready