Annual Report 2007

Georgia Tech Ireland Bridges the Gap to Innovation Athlone, Ireland, is home to GTRI’s first applied research facility outside the United States. I n the year since opening its doors in December 2006, Georgia Tech Ireland (GTI) – GTRI’s first applied research facility outside the United States – has made significant strides and is months ahead of schedule. Already, GTI has begun developing research test beds and has initiated work in each of its four strategic research markets: Internet protocol television (IPTV), radio frequency identification (RFID), health care technologies and sustainable energy. Enda Connolly, division manager for IDA Ireland, the Irish Government’s economic development agency, says the organization has been very pleased with GTI’s progress. “From a strategic perspective, the main reason we engaged with Georgia Tech and GTRI was recognition that we needed to increase our competency level in applied research,” he said. “We are creating a cluster of collaborative research in Ireland and Georgia Tech is one of the key players in this regard.” Overseeing GTI’s efforts is Krishan Ahuja, Regents Professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering, who was appointed director and general manager of GTI in September 2007. In that role, he is working with Irish corporations and universities, the Georgia Tech research community and U.S. companies to provide businesses on both sides of the Atlantic with industry-focused research and development that bridges the gap between academic discovery and commercial success. Constituted as an Irish non-profit company, GTI operates as a partner and collaborator with Irish universities, research centres and companies with reach-back into the research capabilities of Georgia Tech. Research and development at GTI is funded primarily by industry and IDA Ireland. However, contributions from interested donors have been critical in jump-starting early stage research and funding student research experiences and will play an important role in the future. “Georgia Tech is very well-respected here because of the intellectual brainpower we can access across the pond in Atlanta,” said Ahuja, who previously led the Aerospace and Acoustics Technologies Division of GTRI’s Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems Laboratory. “The goal is to make Georgia Tech Ireland a huge success.” GTI’s offices are located in a 115-acre industrial park in the city of Athlone on the Shannon River in the heart of Ireland. The location is a strategic one: Athlone is centrally located to Galway, the Irish center of biomedicine; Cork, the center of the pharmaceutical industry; and Dublin, the center for information communication technology. Over the past year, GTI has worked to develop a national test bed for IPTV, a fully interactive digital television service offered to subscribers via an Internet-based broadband connection, which will be built upon the new fiber being installed between all of Ireland’s research universities, colleges, technical institutes, hospitals and nonprofits. When completed, it will be the largest IPTV test bed in the world. According to Steve Cross, director of GTRI and executive director of GTI, a test bed will simultaneously be developed in Georgia that can be used in future digital media efforts with assistance from the Digital Media Research Program in Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Communication and Culture. Cisco, through Scientific Atlanta, will be donating the equipment. The second area of research being examined at GTI deals with RFID and wireless technologies. The focus here is logistics and supply chains, automated manufacturing techniques and authentication and identification technologies. RFID and wireless technologies can be used to track factory parts in assembly plants, ensuring that correct parts are used in the right sequence and assembled as efficiently as possible. “GTI is building a unique test bed that will have the full capabilities of fundamental device and sensors testing, benchmarking of commercial products as well as the ability to conduct scale testing in live test environments. The fact that the solutions development and associated testing is done with a factory-wide scale model in mind distinguishes this test facility from all other www.gtri.gatech.edu http://www.gtri.gatech.edu

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Annual Report 2007

Annual Report 2007 Contents From the Director Research at GTRI Defense and Security Health and Human Systems Energy and Environment Manufacturing Technologies Information and Communication Technologies GTRI Around the World Interdisciplinary Research Centers The Laboratories of GTRI Georgia Tech Ireland GTRI by the Numbers GTRI and Georgia Tech Supporting Breakthrough Research GTRI Professional Education The People of GTRI

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