Research & Innovation

Outsiders may envision Georgia Tech as some futuristic mothership where super-intelligent scientists-in-training walk side by side with robots. And they may be right. In recent years, professors and students at the Midtown campus have developed artificial intelligence that can feed you, bathe you, and practically tuck you in.

The civic transformation ushered in by driverless cars could revolutionize the way Atlanta’s buildings and roads are designed, as well as upend how people move around a car-centric metro region. Eventually it might even do away with car ownership altogether.

What makes Americans obese? We can point pudgy fingers at giant restaurant portions or weigh the effect of sedentary Netflix binges, but here’s another hefty culprit: supercenters and warehouse clubs like Costco, Sam’s Club, BJ’s Wholesale, and Walmart.

Can Carmine's saga help change our minds about his species?

Deirdre Shoemaker has known from the time she was a 12-year-old science fiction fan that she wanted to spend her life studying black holes. But when she came to Georgia Tech in 2008 as a founding faculty member of the university’s Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, she found few other female postgraduates.

Coyotes have been documented in every county in Georgia. Last year, concerns prompted state officials to launch the Georgia Coyote Challenge, a program to trap or kill more of the animals. But the Atlanta Coyote Project believes the program is inhumane and counterproductive.

Atlanta summers follow a predictable cycle: muggy mornings, sweltering afternoons, stormy evenings. Think thunder rumbles here more than elsewhere? You’re not imagining things. Atlanta “births” storms frequently, according to an analysis of 26,000 Southeastern storm starts.

Can a growing urban center of Atlanta’s size really part ways with fossil fuels in the next 17 years? Yes, experts say. But it won’t be easy. It'll take a combined effort with local businesses and energy providers such as Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility and the sole electricity provider for metro Atlanta.

What's the truth about e-cigarettes? Georgia State University’s School of Public Health aims to find out. The school and its partners will receive $19 million over five years—the largest grant in the university’s history—from the FDA and the National Institutes of Health to create one of fourteen Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science.

As a part of the Kennedy Space Center's Summer of Mars tour, a concept design for the Mars rover is on display at SunTrust Park this weekend.