Georgia Tech Research Podcast

This episode focuses on the International Food Automation Networking (IFAN) Conference at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

The IFAN Conference focuses on Robotics and Automation in the food industry and examines new technology trends, industry challenges, and evolving research. The conference brings together industry leaders from across the globe for two days of education sessions and networking opportunities. The conference is organized by the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI); FAN Limited; and BMC, UK. Targeted toward corporate food manufacturing engineering leaders, equipment suppliers, and end customers of such technologies, the IFAN conference seeks to provide meaningful networking opportunities, highlight tangible research and development activities, and provide a broader context for automation deployment in the food manufacturing sector.

The episode includes live interviews conducted by GTRI Researchers Stephanie Richter and Eric Klein with attendees during the IFAN event.

GTRI recently celebrated its 90th anniversary with a gala event that brought together current and former employees, as well as others who have partnered with GTRI over the years. More than 300 people gathered at The GTRI Headquarters Conference Center in Atlanta, Georgia for a gala event that paid tribute to GTRI's history of innovation and collaboration. The Aug. 16 event featured dignitaries from across GTRI, the Institute, and the State of Georgia.

This podcast episode is a compendium of some of the highlights from the 90th Anniversary Celebration event.

It features recordings of the speeches by:

• GTRI Director James J. (Jim) Hudgens
• Georgia Tech President Angel Cabrera
• University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue.

The podcast also features excerpts from a "roundtable" discussion with prominent former and longstanding current GTRI employees on "GTRI: Past, Present and Future." Joining former GTRI Director Stephen Cross as panelists were Dr. Don Davis, former Deputy Director of the Electronics, Optics, and Systems Directorate (EOSD); Jeanne Balsam, GTRI Principal Research Associate Emerita, and Kim Toatley, who is the current AVP of Finance and Research Administration & Chief Financial Officer.

The podcast episode also includes the thoughts of attendees at the gala event. The dozens of people you will hear in this episode (and many others) were stopped by members of the Georgia Tech Research Podcast team for impromptu "interviews." Their off-the-cuff thoughts show the passion, enthusiasm, and spirit of the people of GTRI, who are leading it into the final decade of its eventful and innovative first century.

The September 27th Tech Connects event will feature Courtney Crooks, Principal Research Scientist and Senior Staff in SEAL's Command, Control, Communications Division (C3D).

Courtney's research expertise is in forensic cyberpsychology, behavioral analysis, and human-centered design of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology with health and defense applications. Courtney's research applies foundational psychoanalytic theory to understand the national security, ethical, and societal implications of psychological responses to cyber-enabled information ecosystems and emerging technology such as AI. She further specializes in understanding the mechanisms of human-machine teaming, cognitive security, malign influence, and coercive control, through the application of human-centered design principles to build exploratory decision support technologies and human system analysis of the lived experience of key stakeholder populations.

This episode of the Georgia Tech Research Podcast features a conversation with David Zurn, Principal Research Engineer in the ELSYS Laboratory of GTRI.

Since joining GTRI's Electronic Systems Laboratory (ELSYS) in 2003, Zurn has worked on a variety of EW-related research efforts including radar warning receiver hardware and software development and test, missile warning system hardware and software test, and development of hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) test solutions tailored to EW applications. Zurn is currently the Division Chief of the Test Engineering Division within ELSYS.

In this podcast episode, Zurn and episode host Stephanie Richter discuss his career at GTRI, emphasizing his focus on student experiences and the importance of meaningful tasks for researchers. He highlights his work on electronic warfare systems, including radar warning receiver design and cognitive electronic warfare systems. Zurn also mentioned his role as interim lab director and the challenges of managing up. He emphasizes the importance of servant leadership, diversity, and customer satisfaction, noting GTRI's growth from $300 million to nearly $1 billion in search awards over the past decade."

You are invited to listen to the next Tech Connects podcast on Friday, August 23rd. Maybe you have heard of Tech Connects, but you're not sure what it is? Then join us for the next Tech Connects research podcast, featuring Dr. Charles Domercant, Senior Research Engineer and Research Engagements Manager for GTRI's Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Charles will speak in more detail about Tech Connects and why it is important to GTRI's mission and vision.

This episode features a conversation with Lee Wadzeck, the 2023 GTRI Leadership Award recipient. During the course of the podcast, he details his leadership style.

Wadzeck is Chief of the Command, Control, and Communications Division (C3D) within the Sensors and Electromagnetic Applications Laboratory (SEAL) at Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). In that role, Wadzeck leads a team of researchers focused on identifying and delivering critical state-of-the-art tactical airborne communications and networking solutions to address a wide array of problem sets.

Prior to joining GTRI, Wadzeck served more than 20 years in the United States Air Force. His last duty assignment was as 18th Wing Superintendent of Exercises/Joint Interface Control Office, stationed at Kadena AFB, Okinawa, Japan.

This episode covers the AI-SLAMS (Artificial Intelligence-driven Smart Low-cost Ammonia Monitoring System) project.

The project is part of the NSF Convergence Accelerator 2023 cohort for phase one to advance solutions and critical areas. AI-SLAMS brings together insights and advances in chemical sensing, material science/nanotechnology, poultry science, manufacturing, AI, and data science. The project aims to identify challenges and opportunities and develop technology concepts and workforce training plans for developing and deploying a smart poultry farm ammonia monitoring system. This will help ensuring health growth, adequate weight gain, and welfare of birds, in association supportive worker safety on the farm.

In this podcast episode, project lead Dr. Judy Song of GTRI is joined by research team members Dr. Brian Fairchild, a UGA poultry science professor, and Dr. Doug Britton, manager of GTRI's Agricultural Technology Research Program (ATRP).

In this episode of the Georgia Tech Research Podcast, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Mark Whorton previews GTRI's upcoming 2024 IRAD Extravaganza.

The objective of Independent Research and Development (IRAD) is to support The GTRI Strategic Plan through investment in projects with anticipated long-term return. Independent research investment is intended to expand capability and sustain a competitive position in critical research areas as well as foster exploration and accelerate entry into new areas that may have a high payoff for GTRI's stakeholders and potential customers.

This episode focuses on "Machine Learning Operations (MLOps)," an Independent Research and Development (IRAD) project by a team of GTRI researchers that was presented in 2023 during GTRI's IRAD Extravaganza. A noteworthy part of the IRAD Extravaganza is the IRAD of the Year Ceremony, which awards particularly outstanding projects. For each annual IRAD Extravaganza, projects are nominated for "IRAD of the Year" awards. Finalists for the IRAD of the Year were judged in two categories:

Large Investment Projects, with multiyear funding greater than $50,000. Small Investment Projects, which have one-year funding of $50,000 or less.

The "Machine Learning Operations (MLOps)" project won in the Large Investment Projects category.

Research team members Maia Gatlin and Austin Ruth are the guests in this podcast episode. Gatlin and Ruth are both Research Engineers in GTRI's Electronic Systems (ELSYS) Laboratory.

This IRAD focuses on the development of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to create a deployable platform of various tools for Machine Learning Operations (MLOps). The team has successfully deployed and tested the infrastructure to showcase the benefits of the platform through various use­ cases. The primary goal is to show that the infrastructure in place can not only support inference and training of machine learning models but also can incorporate active learning and continuous delivery of models to specified repositories. With the IaC, the platform is also deployable to edge and fog machines to perform tasks at the supported resource level.

The Military Graduate Research Program (MGRP) is a key component of GTRI's Intelligent Sustainable Technology Division (ISTD). The Military Graduate Research Program (MGRP) provides opportunities for U.S. military personnel to conduct part-time research at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) while obtaining a STEM graduate degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Military personnel perform state-of-the-art research as a Military Graduate Research Assistant (MGRA) working alongside full-time GTRI Research Faculty. Currently, ISTD has two military graduate research assistants (MGRAs) who are part of MGRP.

In this episode, we hear from Lieutenant Kelly Bowers of the United States Navy and Second Lieutenant Margaret Warner of the United States Air Force. They will discuss how they selected their branch of service, how they came to be MGRAs at GTRI, and some of their conducted research at ISTD.