IPaT Awards Five Research Fellowships

The Institute for People and Technology’s (IPaT) newly launched IPaT Research Fellowship Program awarded new research grants this fall to five graduate students. This new IPaT fellowship program aims to bring together students and researchers from across the Georgia Tech campus to partner with industry mentors and collaborators in the IPaT ecosystem.

IPaT research fellowships initiate new avenues of research or further existing research activities. The fellowship provides funding in partnership with sponsors, as well as resources and access to assets – labs, technologies, data - that IPaT oversees. This year’s funding is generously provided by Verizon Wireless.

The IPaT Fellowship Program grant winners in Fall 2021 were:

• Brandon Biggs, a doctoral student in human centered computing in the School of Interactive Computing
• Ciabhan Connelly, a doctoral student in human centered computing in the School of Interactive Computing
• Daniel Kim, a doctoral student in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Natalie Mueller, a master’s student majoring in computer science in the College of Computing
• Sachin Pendse, a doctoral student in human centered computing in the School of Interactive Computing

Grant proposal submissions by the students were focused on one of IPaT’s four research pillars:

1) Lifelong Health and Well-Being
From pediatrics to aging, IPaT's continuum of healthcare research is working to promote and enable vibrant and lifelong physical and mental health. Accomplished scholars and clinicians work together to transform healthcare delivery systems by creating novel and easily accessible health and wellness technologies. IPaT has led breakthroughs in health information technology, approaches for increasing patient engagement and treatment adherence, clinical process improvements, and new healthcare delivery knowledge.

2) Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation
IPaT’s work in this area focuses on the daily lives of communities – how they live, work and play. We are finding innovative approaches to shaping sustainable cities with research that thinks globally while acting locally. We're examining the transformative role of technology in transportation, civic engagement, and disaster recovery focusing on novel communication and information technologies to aid communities during disaster and crisis situations.

3) Shaping the Human-Technology Frontier
IPaT is shaping the human-technology frontier by augmenting human capabilities at every level. We're exploring new ideas in user experiences that foster creativity, stimulate learning and enable productive collaboration. Through this initiative, we're researching and developing novel wearable computing, assistive, augmented reality, and gaming technologies.

4) Platforms and Services for Socio-Technical Systems
Through our socio-technical systems research, IPaT is merging physical and digital worlds with complex data analytic and communication capabilities. We are building new network infrastructure technologies with the goal of creating connected systems that support communities. IPaT is also leveraging the wealth of expertise across Georgia Tech's colleges and schools, as well as partner institutions, to understand and enable fundamental change of complex enterprise systems.