For 20 years, Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) has brought together campus researchers who collectively develop better ways to meet the energy needs of today and tomorrow. 

These days, that amounts to more than 1,000 people. Georgia Tech faculty are creating advanced communications and information systems, sensing and control approaches, and transmission and energy storage technologies that will make the nation’s power distribution systems more efficient and cost-effective. Their research also focuses on integrating renewable energy sources and electric vehicles.

“As the nation’s largest technologically focused university, Georgia Tech is playing an integral role in developing solutions that enable more equitable, lower cost, and cleaner generation, storage, distribution, and utilization of energy,” said Tim Lieuwen, Georgia Tech’s interim executive vice president for research. Lieuwen knows SEI better than anyone: he had been its executive director since 2012 until stepping in this summer as interim leader of Tech’s entire research enterprise. 

Leading the Charge

Matt McDowell is transforming battery technology from the lab to the market

Matt McDowell is a matchmaker. As co-director of the Georgia Tech Advanced Battery Center, McDowell supports the state’s $30 billion investment in battery technology by connecting companies to Georgia Tech for research and development. He and co-director Gleb Yushin promote the campus’s unique facilities to foster relationships between Tech and global partners to create new battery technologies for electric vehicles, grid energy storage, electric aviation, and more.

“Next-generation batteries require materials with higher charge storage capacity, or they require the development of new materials for entirely new battery systems beyond lithium-ion,” McDowell said. “For example, sodium-ion batteries have a lower density, could be cheaper to make, and could provide back-up power and renewable energy for the grid.” 

Sodium is also more plentiful than lithium and more geographically friendly. Instead of mining in limited areas around the world for lithium, sodium is widely available, including by extraction from the oceans. Sodium-ion batteries also use hard carbon instead of graphite, the main component in lithium-ion batteries. 

“Graphite is a great material, but most of it comes from overseas. Scientists can make it, but it takes a lot of energy and high temperatures. Sodium is more sustainable,” McDowell said. 

McDowell sees a future — one that isn’t that far away — where electric vehicles are widely available, including at costs less than $30,000. The only way that happens is by bringing down the cost of batteries with new technologies. That’s the goal of the Advanced Battery Center. In addition to McDowell, Yushin, and approximately 20 other faculty members, the center represents battery R&D activities at Tech that includes 150 or so graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. 

They’re already looking forward to the next step and deepening Georgia Tech’s impact on the state and nation. 

“An important effort within the Advanced Battery Center is the creation and development of a new pilot-scale battery manufacturing laboratory facility on campus,” McDowell said. “This facility will enable translation of new energy storage innovations to commercial scales, and it will be a key resource for Georgia Tech and the broader region.”

Same Flight, Less Carbon

Researchers are creating and testing sustainable aviation fuels for cleaner travel

According to the International Energy Agency, aviation contributes 3% of all global carbon dioxide emissions.  Although only a small portion of the world’s population currently travels by air, more people will travel as incomes grow: the industry expects passenger-miles to double by 2050. Facing this prospect of high and growing emissions, the international aviation industry has pledged to eliminate its carbon emissions by 2050. 

The best bet to get there is rethinking what fuels are used in aviation. Instead of using petroleum, sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) — or, more technically, low-carbon fuels — can be produced from a range of feedstocks, including agricultural residues, waste oils and fats, energy crops, and municipal waste.

Many airlines have signed agreements with SAF producers, and some of the fuel is in use. The U.S. Department of Energy reported that nearly 400,000 commercial flights have used SAFs at approximately 50 worldwide airports. Meanwhile, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects daily production of 50,000 barrels of SAFs in 2025. That’s still a long way from meeting the need: U.S. jet fuel demand is expected to exceed 2 million barrels a day by 2050. 

Even though engineers and scientists know how to make SAFs, there are reasons why it’s currently in such short supply. And those used today, aerospace engineering professor Adam Steinberg said, need to be blended with fossil fuels to fly safely. 

“So far, no commercial flights have used a 100% SAF. Other than test flights, today’s SAFs are only certified to fly when blended with at least 50% petroleum-based fuel,” said Steinberg, Pratt & Whitney Chair and professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering (AE). “SAFs don’t have the exact same chemical components as current jet fuel, which leads to unintended engine complications. A 100% SAF is currently too big a safety risk.”

Many of the engines in current airplanes were designed decades ago. Steinberg said those old machines rely on the makeup of petroleum-based fuels to function. For example, SAFs usually don’t contain the aromatic hydrocarbons molecules that are found in traditional fuels. Getting rid of aromatics may be good for sustainability, but they’re needed to swell seals in current engines. 

“The engines leak if the fuel doesn’t contain aromatics. That’s one reason the industry is blending SAF with fossil fuel,” Steinberg said. 

Addressing those issues is one of Steinberg’s goals as director of Georgia Tech’s Ben T. Zinn Combustion Laboratory. It’s among the world’s largest academic combustion research facilities. The Zinn Lab allows Steinberg and other researchers to test fuels and their impacts on engines. 

“Our goal is to develop technologies that increase efficiency and simultaneously decrease emissions of sustainable aviation fuels,” Sun said. 

Work at Georgia Tech on SAFs extends beyond aerospace engineers. Industrial engineer Valerie Thomas performs environmental lifecycle assessments of low-carbon transportation fuels, including those for aviation. She’s nationally recognized in the field and recently chaired a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee that authored a report on the topic.

Thomas has studied fuels made from blue-green algae and explored if carbon dioxide can be captured from the air and converted into fuels.

“I think we really can stop using fossil fuels, find ways of living our lives, and run the economy without emitting greenhouse gases,” said Thomas, Anderson-Interface Chair of Natural Systems and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “It’s a big challenge, but it’s not one of these impossible things.”

For starters, although the government has enacted regulations and financial incentives to help decrease sales of vehicles that burn fossil fuel, neither exist for aviation.

“Gas prices also are cheaper now than they were about a decade ago, so that has slowed the appetite for companies to invest in something that isn’t as affordable,” Thomas said. 

In the meantime, Thomas stressed that engineers and scientists need to put more focus on the methods they use to evaluate emissions. Specifically, she said more needs to be learned about how new and future fuels decrease — or increase — emissions. According to Thomas, Georgia Tech can lead in that direction because it’s a “can-do” place. 

“When I suggest something here on campus, people are likely to say ‘Yeah, let’s go do that,’” she said. “That’s true even if my idea isn’t completely formed. We just go and try it out and put it together. Those are the things, along with our facilities and the vision of our leadership, that make Georgia Tech and the future of low-carbon fuels a really good combination.”

Nuclear Power and Net Zero

From Chernobyl clippings to the Woodruff School, Anna Erickson advocates for nuclear energy’s safety and strength

Her mom asked her to stop — repeatedly — but Anna Erickson kept on going. She was just 5 years old, yet Erickson would gather newspaper clippings about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and read them to her younger sister again and again.

Her mother worried it would scare the baby. But that fascination set the groundwork for Erickson’s lifetime of interest in nuclear energy. 

Decades later, Erickson is one of the nation’s most prominent researchers in nuclear power security, safeguards, and sustainability. Nearly every casual conversation about her job inevitably turns to the notorious nuclear disasters at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, or Fukushima. But just as she was determined long ago to keep reading to her sister, she’s similarly focused now on telling people that nuclear energy is safe — and necessary for the future. 

Erickson said nuclear energy will be even more imperative in the years to come: more data centers and artificial intelligence will need substantial energy supplies all day, every day. Data centers currently represent about 4% of electricity demand, but Erickson said the number is expected to more than double by 2030. It’s why Microsoft recently announced an agreement to reopen a nuclear unit at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island and purchase all of the plant’s electricity. 

“Americans aren’t good at consuming less, so future electricity needs for everything will only increase,” Erickson said. “Nuclear shouldn’t be, and can’t be, the only source of power. But it definitely needs to supplement other carbon-free, sustainable sources.”

To get there, Erickson suggested three strategies.

One: build more nuclear plants. When the third and fourth units began operating within the past year at Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia, they were the first newly constructed nuclear units in the U.S. in more than 30 years. They’re among 94 currently in operation around the country. However, to achieve America’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions from power plants by 2050, the nation will need to triple the output of nuclear power and add 200 more nuclear reactors.

Erickson is encouraged about nuclear power’s future partially because public opinion has shifted. A 2023 Gallup poll found that support among Americans for nuclear power is at its highest point in more than a decade. Part of her job will be continuing to address misconceptions about the technology and advocating for its increased role in sustainability. 

“We’ve been creating nuclear power for more than 70 years. If all its waste were stored at the same place, it would only cover one football field, 10 feet deep,” Erickson said.

“We need to diversify to meet the nation’s carbon zero goals. And nuclear is a clear path to making it happen.”

Sustainability on a Roll

Tequila Harris’ roll-to-roll manufacturing techniques mean fewer steps and less waste when making renewable materials

Sustainability is a cornerstone of Tequila Harris’ lab, where she works on coating science and technology for clean water applications, renewable materials, and advanced roll-to-roll manufacturing processes.

A key focus is decreasing the number of steps needed to fabricate thin and thick film technologies used in these areas.

“Fewer manufacturing steps translates to less energy and water requirements, making the manufacturing methods more sustainable,” said Harris, professor in the Woodruff School. “When you consider material scalability, fewer steps when fabricating billions of parts can have a significant impact.” 

That relentless focus on eliminating waste is why the mantra in her Highly Advanced Roll-to-Roll iManufacturing Systems (HARRiS) group is “No gaps, no scrap.”

That work received a boost this fall. Harris opened a new modular, pilot scale roll-to-roll facility to advance thin film research and development beyond the lab. The facility is open for a large variety of materials that Harris’ group can use across a plethora of different technologies.

“Using our new modular, pilot scale roll-to-roll manufacturing facility, we can analyze film fabrication at speeds a thousand times faster than what has been realized at the laboratory scale,” Harris said. “Instead of creating material at one-tenth or three-tenths of a meter per minute, we process materials at coating speeds up to 200 meters per minute, using flexo, gravure, or inkjet printing in addition to slot die coating at the pilot scale.”

The HARRiS lab works with academic, government, and industrial users, all with the goal of building an ecosystem around scalable manufacturing for a broad collection of materials. On campus, Harris works with Sankar Nair in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) on new membrane materials for papermaking. With ChBE’s Carson Meredith and Meisha Shofner in MSE, Harris’ lab is collaborating on renewable food packaging. She is planning for a future partnership with McDowell on his battery technologies. 

Her focus on improving products and materials comes, in part, Harris said, from a childhood where she was exposed to a combination of a small farm-to-table lifestyle and industrial factories in neighboring towns where many people in her community worked. 

“I preferred improving and making products to farming,” she said. “In graduate school, I studied manufacturing and design of machine tools. When I began my career at Georgia Tech, my focus shifted from solely coating technology to the integration of coating science. This has led to the design and implementation of innovative manufacturing approaches with an understanding of the entire coating process and the quality and performance of the resulting materials.”