The Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Pediatric Technology Center at Georgia Tech (PTC) is excited to announce that Gian-Gabriel Garcia will serve as its Pillar 1 Co-Lead. Pillar 1 focuses on data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. In his new role, Garcia’s responsibilities will include setting the pillar’s strategy and vision, selecting and managing projects, overseeing various pillar activities, and working collaboratively across research groups and institutions. He will also identify cutting-edge technology and engineering solutions to implement priority projects, while balancing pragmatism and feasibility of these approaches.

The PTC brings clinical experts together with Georgia Tech scientists and engineers to develop technological solutions to problems in the health and care of children. The Center provides extraordinary opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration in pediatrics, creating breakthrough discoveries that often can only be found at the intersection of multiple disciplines.

Garcia will work under the leadership of PTC Co-Directors Dr. Stanislav Emelianov (Georgia Tech) and Dr. Wilbur Lam (Children’s) of Georgia Tech’s Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Dr. Naveen Muthu of Children’s Physician Group will be Garcia’s  counterpart in leading Pillar 1.

Since 2021, Garcia has served as an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. His research group has published numerous journal & conference papers, and book chapters related to data-driven machine learning and optimization in healthcare, including various applications in diagnosis and disease management of concussion, opioids, cardiovascular disease, glaucoma, and maternal health. He has received federal funding as a primary investigator from both the National Institutes for Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He and his research group have received several national and international recognitions for their work.

Garcia also teaches graduate-level courses in machine learning and optimization for healthcare. He received his Ph.D. in industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan and was a postdoctoral fellow at the MGH Institute for Technology Assessment.

The second round of Tech Ready Grants from the Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) is officially underway! These $25,000 grants help Georgia Tech faculty advance their technology's readiness and commercialize their research, transitioning projects from the lab to market success. Don’t miss this opportunity to accelerate your innovations. The application deadline is August 9th.

Why You Should Apply:

Funding: Receive $25,000 to further your technology’s readiness level and increase the ability to commercialize your research

Commercialization Support: Get the resources and mentorship needed to transition your projects from the lab to market success

Enhanced Impact: Align your research with market needs without disrupting your academic pursuits

Eligibility:

GT Faculty inventors seeking resources to transition their work from lab to market success

Requirements:

Complete the Tech Ready grant application

Have an invention disclosure on file or submit one before the application deadline. Disclose your invention here.

Submit progress reports at 6 and 12 months or upon project completion

Funds cannot be used for travel

IP must be solely owned by GTRC

Project must be completed within 12 months

The application deadline is August 9th. Apply today and take the next step in bringing your research to market success. We look forward to your submission!

The Petit Undergraduate Research Scholars program provides an opportunity for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to mentor undergraduate scholars for valuable mentoring and project management experience while allowing them to further their research interests.

The mentor project submission process and the undergraduate scholar application process take place in the fall of 2024 to select scholars and mentors for the 2025 class. The 2025 program itself runs from January through December (all mentors are required to commit to mentor their assigned Petit Scholar for the full twelve-month period).

Benefits to Mentors:

• IBB Graduate student/Postdoc mentors receive $2,000 to be used for travel to scientific conferences or materials/supplies for the lab
• Great CV builder, most employers prefer Ph.D.’s with management/mentoring experience

At Georgia Tech, an incredible piece of biotechnology has cured one lucky child in a groundbreaking new treatment for a rare birth defect of the windpipe.

Partnering with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the invention is a 3D-printed tracheal splint, which has allowed 4-year-old Justice Altidore to leap into preschool with all the gusty enthusiasm of a normal child.

About 1 in 2,100 children like Justice are born with tracheomalacia (TM), the most common inherited birth defect of the windpipe, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

TM occurs when cartilage in the trachea, or windpipe, is weak or floppy, causing the windpipe’s walls to collapse and restrict breathing. Treatments are by no means a sure thing, and much of a child’s early life with TM involves labored breathing and being put on a ventilator.

The Georgia Tech splints are made of bioabsorbable material, and hold the trachea in place like a medic would splint a bone. The cartilage eventually develops, and the splints are ultimately absorbed.

Children’s pediatric cardiologist Dr. Kevin Maher and Dr. Steven Goudy, a pediatric otolaryngologist, oversaw Altidore and three other children receive custom tracheal splints for an FDA-approved expanded access trial.

All four have seen substantial improvements in their respiratory capabilities, and the unprecedented results suggest a new era of care for the narrow field has arrived.

It’s not the first time that 3D printing has been used to help tracheal recovery.

In March, GNN reported that a biotech company had become the first and only one in the world to produce a bio-3D-printed windpipe that was successfully transplanted into a human body.

Nasal stem cells and cartilage cells were obtained from other patients who underwent other procedures, and these were replicated and combined with polycaprolactone (PCL) for structural support as well as a special ink made from living cells to make the windpipe, or trachea.

The transplant procedure was performed at St. Mary’s Hospital in Seoul on a woman in her 50s who lost part of her own trachea during thyroid removal surgery. The one-of-a-kind 3D printer, designed with over a decade of research and testing, was provided by the company T&R Biofab.