Recent Press Coverage

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This G.A. Tech Designer Wants to Champion Visual Design for Orangutans

April 20, 2017

Becky Scheel, a Digital Media M.S. student in the Ivan Allen College School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was featured in “This G.A. Tech Designer Wants to Champion Visual Design for Orangutans” by Hypepotamus.

Excerpt:

Not everyone can say that they are on a first-name basis with a red panda at ZooATL. Designer Becky Scheel can. After 9+ years of working as a graphic designer at the zoo (and having tons of one-on-one time with the animals), Scheel moved on to the Master’s program in Digital Media at Georgia Tech to expand her design and programming skills.

While her design background is impressive, her special interest in the environment and wildlife conservation led to a thesis on orangutans and animal-computer interaction, setting her apart from the rest. Her big, creative ideas can translate to any work environment, including data visualization and UX.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Hypepotamus
Let Robots Teach Our Kids? Here's Why That Isn't Such a Bad Idea

April 19, 2017

Jason Borenstein, senior academic professional in the Ivan Allen College School of Public Policy, was quoted in “Let Robots Teach Our Kids? Here's Why That Isn't Such a Bad Idea” by NBC News.

Excerpt:

While some autistic children have difficulty maintaining eye contact, the same isn't always true when they interact with robots, adds Jason Borenstein, a bioethicist at Georgia Tech whose research focuses on robotic caregiving to children and the elderly. "For whatever reason, they tend to bond more quickly with a robotic entity," he says.

For these reasons, researchers have used robots to engage with special needs children and elicit numerous behaviors, including initiating interactions, imitating behaviors, learning to take turns, recognizing emotions, and focusing their attention.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: NBC News
Dems Look for Trump Rebuke in Georgia Special Election

April 18, 2017

Richard Barke, associate professor in the Ivan Allen College School of Public Policy, was quoted in “Dems Look for Trump Rebuke in Georgia Special Election” by The Hill.

Excerpt:

It’s more likely that Ossoff, 30, will fall short of the 50 percent threshold, meaning that he’ll face a Republican candidate in a June runoff to determine a winner. That’s the scenario the GOP is hoping for, as Republicans think they can defeat the Democrat in a head-to-head race that would allow them to coalesce behind a single nominee.
“This race is seen as a referendum on two things: One, on how well the Trump presidency is doing and if there are any Republicans upset enough to want to send a message. And two, a referendum on whether the Democratic Party can actually flip some districts,” said Richard Barke, a political science professor at Georgia Tech who lives in the district.
“It looks like it’s in play, but the question will be all about who turns out.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Hill
2017's Greenest States

April 18, 2017

Valerie Thomas, Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems in the Ivan Allen College School of Public Policy, was quoted in “2017's Greenest States” by WalletHub.

Excerpt:

Eco-friendliness and personal finance are essentially cousins. Not only are our environmental and financial necessities aligned — providing ourselves with sustainable, clean drinking water and nutritious sustenance, for example — but we also spend money on both the household and government levels in support of environmental security.

Then there’s climate change. We’ve already seen a rise in powerful land-bearing storm systems and extreme droughts. But that’s just the beginning, as storm surges and other bad weather are expected to cause more than $500 billion in property damage by the year 2100. Climate change will also have a direct impact on our military industrial complex, as nearly all of our East Coast air and naval installations are vulnerable to sea-level rise.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: WalletHub
Mass Transit Advocates Hope for Boost from Highway Collapse

April 16, 2017

Ronald Bayor, emeritus professor in the Ivan Allen College School of History and Sociology, was quoted in “Mass Transit Advocates Hope for Boost from Highway Collapse” by The New York Times.

Excerpt:

"There's no question in my mind that since the 1960s, race has been the underlying factor in all of these attitudes against bringing MARTA into the outlying areas," said Ronald H. Bayor, a professor emeritus of history at Georgia Tech and author of the 1996 book "Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta." ''White flight was well underway. People were running away from the desegregation of the Atlanta schools. Some of the opposition was from whites who worried that it would lead to the integration of the suburbs."

Long after MARTA began operating, Bayor said, whites would privately joke that its nickname stood for "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta." Publicly, opponents were less explicit but warned that mass transit would increase crime or diminish property values in the suburbs.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The New York Times
Joe Bankoff Takes Helm of Fulton County Arts Council

April 14, 2017

Joseph Bankoff, chair in the Ivan Allen College Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was featured in “Joe Bankoff Takes Helm of Fulton County Arts Council” by Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Excerpt:

Longtime Atlanta business leader Joe Bankoff is the new chairman of the Fulton County Arts Council, succeeding art collector Jerry Thomas.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Atlanta Business Chronicle
Georgia Econ Profs Urge Trump to be Careful on Immigration

April 14, 2017

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that Tibor Besedes and Erik Johnson, associate and assistant professors, respectively, in the Ivan Allen College School of Economics, joined about 40 Georgia economists to call on President Trump and Congressional leaders “to avoid changes that would undercut the economic value of immigration.”

Excerpt:

Thirty-nine economists from Georgia colleges and universities have signed a letter calling on President Trump and Congressional leaders to avoid changes that would undercut the economic value of immigration.

The economists joined 1,431 others from around the country in a petition organized by New American Economy, a bi-partisan group of mayors and business leaders who say they support immigration reform that will boost the U.S. economy and create jobs here.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Atlanta Journal Constitution
To Be a Genius, Think Like a 94-Year-Old

April 7, 2017

John Walsh, professor in the Ivan Allen College School of Public Policy, was quoted in “To Be a Genius, Think Like a 94-Year-Old” by The New York Times.

Excerpt:

On the contrary, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that late blooming is no anomaly. A 2016 Information Technology and Innovation Foundation study found that inventors peak in their late 40s and tend to be highly productive in the last half of their careers. Similarly, professors at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Hitotsubashi University in Japan, who studied data about patent holders, found that, in the United States, the average inventor sends in his or her application to the patent office at age 47, and that the highest-value patents often come from the oldest inventors — those over the age of 55.

John P. Walsh, one of the professors, joked that the Patent Office should give a “senior discount” because “there’s clear evidence that people with seniority are making important contributions to invention.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The New York Times
Werner Stiller, East German Spy and Defector, Dies at 69

April 3, 2017

Kristie Macrakis, professor in the Ivan Allen College School of History and Sociology, was quoted in “Werner Stiller, East German Spy and Defector, Dies at 69” by The Washington Post.

Excerpt:

Mr. Stiller was for many years a model citizen of communist East Germany, where he had been a member of the Free German Youth as a teenager and joined the state Communist Party by 21. His loyalties began to shift by the mid-1970s, according to Kristie Macrakis, a Georgia Tech professor who studies espionage and chronicled Mr. Stiller’s story in the 2008 book “Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World.”

She said that Mr. Stiller was disillusioned with the repressive politics of East Germany, but also frustrated with a career that had stagnated and with a strait-laced German society that abhorred his lavish, womanizing lifestyle.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Washington Post
The Paris Agreement is Burning

March 28, 2017

Marilyn Brown, professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in “The Paris Agreement is Burning” by The New Republic.

Excerpt:

Trump’s executive order will do the opposite of this, reversing reductions America was already on track to make in both of those sectors. Take the Clean Power Plan, the signature policy Trump is aiming to repeal. If that plan were allowed to continue, it would have gotten the U.S. seven percent of the way to its 26 percent reduction goal under the Paris agreement, according to Marilyn Brown, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor and energy policy expert. The same goes for Obama’s fuel economy standards, which require cars and trucks to go further on less gasoline. Those would have gotten the U.S. another eight percent of the way toward meeting its goal under the Paris accord, Brown said. But Trump has promised to reduce those standards, too.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The New Republic
CNN Interviews Marilyn Brown About Climate Regulations

March 28, 2017

Marilyn Brown, professor in the School of Public Policy, was interviewed by CNN about President Trump's attempts to undo many Obama-era climate regulations..

Watch the full interview here.

Published in: CNN
Georgia Tech Alumni Increasing Efforts to Raise Scholarship Funds for Black Students

March 27, 2017

Jacqueline Royster, dean of the Ivan Allen College, and Thomas “Danny” Boston, professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, were mentioned in “Georgia Tech Alumni Increasing Efforts to Raise Scholarship Funds for Black Students” by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Excerpt:

The Georgia Tech Black Alumni Organization has started a year-long campaign to increase the number of its scholarships for black students.

The organization has scheduled a Leaders & Legends event on Sat., April 8 to recognize accomplished alumni, students, staff and faculty. The black-tie optional event will be at Tech’s Academy of Medicine, 875 West Peachtree St. in Atlanta.

The endowment currently provides $35,000 in scholarships.

Tech has tried to increase the percentage of African-American students on its campus, which is currently about 7 percent.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Korean Social Sciences College Named After Former Georgia Tech Prof John Endicott

March 24, 2017

Jacqueline Royster, dean of the Ivan Allen College, and John Endicott, professor emeritus in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, were featured in “Korean Social Sciences College Named After Former Georgia Tech Prof John Endicott” by Global Atlanta.

Excerpt:

Since he joined the faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology, John E. Endicott has had a sixth sense for innovation in his career and in his life, which took him from Atlanta to become president of a Korean university where on March 2 the university named a new building and a new school of social sciences after him.

Not surprisingly, Woosong University’s SolBridge International School of Business, where he serves as vice-chancellor, located in Daejeon, South Korea provides an interdisciplinary program of international studies “with business and innovations in mind.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Global Atlanta
Former NATO Commander Breedlove Puts Georgia Tech Training Toward Containing Russia

March 22, 2017

Global Atlanta highlighted General Philip Breedlove's (Civil Engineering 1977) mission as a distinguished professor in the Ivan Allen College Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech.

Excerpts:

By returning to the Georgia Institute of Technology as a distinguished professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs last year, Gen. Philip Breedlove completes a full circle in a career that includes his service as NATO‘s Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the commander of U.S. European Command.”

"In his address, he said that the U.S.’s opponents “are more emboldened, more than they have ever been,” while politically the U.S. was divided and needed to become more unified in its understanding of the values it upholds and its politics. “To reestablish our national position in the world, we can’t do that with two voices out of Washington D.C.,” he added.

He also said that he was concerned by Russia’s role in the U.S. elections, but somewhat downplayed his concern saying that the challenges Russia presents to the U.S. “are far bigger and impactful than what has happened in any election.”

“I think that Mr. Putin is incredibly happy with what has happened,” he added. “He has challenged the legitimacy of democracy.”

Read the full article

Published in: Global Atlanta
The Spy Among Us

March 20, 2017

Kristie Macrakis, professor in the Ivan Allen College School of History and Sociology, wrote “The Spy Among Us” for The Washington Times.

Excerpt:

Everyone loves a good spy story. But it can be hard to tell if the story is fact or fiction; this is especially the case with spy memoirs. Jack Barsky’s page-turning memoir, “Deep Undercover,” has a ring of authenticity to it. Most of the book is written using recreated dialogue, but is it true?

Part of Mr. Barsky’s story was told by “60 Minutes” and it reads like the best of spy fiction: While he was a prize-winning chemistry student in East Germany, the KGB recruited Mr. Barsky to become an illegal agent abroad. An illegal is one of Russia’s most secret agents. The spy is sent to the target country under an assumed identity and is told to build a life acquiring all the necessary documentation.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Washington Times
Art Review: Food Innovators Offer Plenty of Food for Thought at MODA

March 16, 2017

The Atlanta Journal Constitution article, Art Review: Food Innovators Offer Plenty of Food for Thought at MODA, reviewed the Food by Design: Sustaining the Future exhibit at the Museum of Design Atlanta featuring projects from the Public Design Workshop, a design research studio led by Ivan Allen College School of Literature, Media, and Communication Associate Professor Carl DiSalvo.

Excerpt:

In the future, we will eat baked goods made from pulverized crickets, subsist solely on liquid diets of protein shakes, grow basil in living room pods with timers that alert us when the growing cycle is over and tend gardens in inner-city concrete mediums. And in the Museum of Design Atlanta exhibition “Food by Design: Sustaining the Future,” the future is now. All of those things and far more fascinating food-centric projects are already a reality as scientists, students, architects, activists and gardeners visualize how to grow and prepare food in a changing world… A number of the projects in “Food by Design,” from a Georgia Tech grad’s food-substitute innovation Soylent to Atlanta compost organization Compostwheels, have Atlanta roots, many of them spearheaded by ordinary citizens and by the city’s first Urban Agriculture Director Mario Cambardella.

Full article

Published in: Atlanta Journal Constitution
Artificial Intelligence? Only An Idiot Would Think That

March 16, 2017

LMC Professor Ian Bogost was quoted in the Irish Times article, “Artificial Intelligence? Only an Idiot Would Think That” in the Irish Times, March 9, 2017

Excerpt:

Not every technological innovation is artificial intelligence and labelling it as such is making the term “AI” virtually meaningless, says Ian Bogost, a professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US. Bogost gives the example of Google’s latest algorithm, Perspective, which is designed to detect hate speech. While media coverage has been hailing this as an AI wonder, it turns out that simple typos can fool the system and allow abusive, harassing, and toxic comments to slip through easily enough. Researchers from the University of Washington, Seattle, put the algorithm through its paces by testing the phrase “Anyone who voted for Trump is a moron”, which scored 79 per cent on the toxicity scale. Meanwhile, “Anyone who voted for Trump is a mo.ron” scored a tame 13 per cent. If you can easily game Artificial Intelligence, was it really intelligent in the first place?

Full article:
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/artificial-intelligence-only-an-idiot-would-think-that-1.2999847

Published in: Irish Times
Trump, Russia And Nuclear Weapons: More With Sam Nunn

March 14, 2017

Part 2 of Dennis O'Hare's conversation with Sam Nunn aired March 14, 2017 on WABE and covered U.S.- Russia relations (countries have “existential common interest” and must work together, importance of military-to-military cooperation, Trump administration’s contacts with Russia; themes from recent Nunn-Browne-Ischinger-Ivanov op-ed); President Trump’s proposed defense budget; issues where Democrats and Republicans should be able to find common ground (infrastructure, reducing corporate taxes); Senator Nunn’s concern about some who “delegitimize presidential elections;” and the Iran deal.

Published in: WABE
Trump, Russia and Nuclear Weapons: More With Sam Nunn

March 14, 2017

Sam Nunn, distinguished professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was interviewed in “Trump, Russia and Nuclear Weapons: More With Sam Nunn” by WABE.

Excerpt:

As U. S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson begins a trip to Asia this week, the emerging nuclear threat posed by North Korea will likely be a major subject of his talks in Japan, South Korea, and China.

However, Russia remains the U.S. adversary with the largest nuclear capability by far, and the chance of a conflict with Russia--especially one caused by lack of communication--continues to worry former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn.

The Georgia Democrat is a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and is currently the co-chair and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Recently, he introduced Tillerson at the Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of State.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: WABE
Why Is It That So Many Basic Things Don't Work As Well As They Used To?

March 14, 2017

Ian Bogost, professor in the Ivan Allen College School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was quoted in “Why Is It That So Many Basic Things Don't Work As Well As They Used To?” by Mother Nature Network.

Excerpt:

Ian Bogost at the Atlantic shares my frustrations, and writes: "So many ordinary objects and experiences have become technologized ... that they have also ceased to work in their usual manner. It’s common to think of such defects as matters of bad design. That’s true, in part. But technology is also more precarious than it once was. Unstable, and unpredictable."

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Mother Nature Network

Recent Press Coverage

This G.A. Tech Designer Wants to Champion Visual Design for Orangutans

Let Robots Teach Our Kids? Here's Why That Isn't Such a Bad Idea

Dems Look for Trump Rebuke in Georgia Special Election

2017's Greenest States

Mass Transit Advocates Hope for Boost from Highway Collapse

Joe Bankoff Takes Helm of Fulton County Arts Council

Georgia Econ Profs Urge Trump to be Careful on Immigration

To Be a Genius, Think Like a 94-Year-Old

Werner Stiller, East German Spy and Defector, Dies at 69

The Paris Agreement is Burning

CNN Interviews Marilyn Brown About Climate Regulations

Georgia Tech Alumni Increasing Efforts to Raise Scholarship Funds for Black Students

Korean Social Sciences College Named After Former Georgia Tech Prof John Endicott

Former NATO Commander Breedlove Puts Georgia Tech Training Toward Containing Russia

The Spy Among Us

Art Review: Food Innovators Offer Plenty of Food for Thought at MODA

Artificial Intelligence? Only An Idiot Would Think That

Trump, Russia And Nuclear Weapons: More With Sam Nunn

Trump, Russia and Nuclear Weapons: More With Sam Nunn

Why Is It That So Many Basic Things Don't Work As Well As They Used To?

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