Micro-Grants Community-Based Research Teams Present their Work

The 2022-23 Micro-Grants Community-Based Research awardees presented their findings at the second annual symposium, held on April 18, 2023, in the auditorium of the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, which is the region’s first Living Building. Ten teams presented to faculty, staff, students, and student family members. The topics were wide ranging, and dealt with both practical and theoretical issues. The work surpassed all expectations for quality and quantity.

Devised by the Kendeda Building Advisory Board and sponsored by the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems and the Kendeda Building, the Micro-Grants Research Program solicits proposals for very small scale ($50 to $500), short term, sustainability related, research studies to be conducted by members of the Georgia Tech community. Community investigators are encouraged to explore ways in which the Georgia Tech campus can continue to innovate, demonstrate, prove, and promote the adoption of best and next practices in regenerative design and operations. Researchers were also encouraged to use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for research design. All members of the Georgia Tech community were encouraged to apply. The program especially sought proposals from students and staff that had little or no prior research experience.

The program has four objectives:

1. to expand scientific thinking and the understanding of the research process amongst those not (yet) directly involved in scientific research;
2. to bolster the use of the campus as a living laboratory;
3. to give voice to people and communities outside of research that have culturally novel perspectives on problems and their possible solutions, and to create new pathways for partnering with them; and
4. to seed novel ideas and nurture nascent investigators.

The 2022-23 awardees and the titles of their projects are:

• Alex Lomis, Devi Patel, and Dr. Jung-Ho Lewe, "Design and Development of a Low-Cost and Highly-Scaleable Occupancy Counter to Optimize the Utilization of HVAC Resources"
• Kaitlyn Tran, Shivani Potdar, and Amanda Janusz, "Bird Safe Campus"
• Ricardo Martinez, "Chiropterans at Georgia Tech"
• Elizabeth Umanah, "Reimagining Eco-Friendly Parking Lot Design Through Simulations"
• Lujain Diab, Ally Kimpling, Jenna Sitta, Marcus Morris, Skylar Ryan, Dr. Jennifer Leavey, and Steve Place, "A Greener Grey: “Ironing” Out Issues in Greywater Systems"
• Jun Wang and Yilun Zha, "Kendeda’s Educational Role in Waste Management and Recycling"
• Siddharth Sivakumarun, "Investigating Capacity for Regenerative Energy through Foot Traffic"
• Alexandra Rodriguez Dalmau and John Fortner, "Recognition of Insect Species in the Georgia Tech campus with Machine Learning"
• Gray Simmons, Kevin Leach, and Dr. Jung-Ho Lewe, "IOT Climate Sensor Development for HVAC Efficiency Analysis"
• Kaylin Cross, Pranav Jothi, Maanas Kumar, Brian Wu, Savannah Howard, and Sheng Dai, "Prototyping Bio-inspired Geothermal Energy Recovery for Space Heating and Cooling"

More details and links to all the presentations are available at this web page.