Professor Suresh K. Sitaraman received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (NITT) at its 50-year Golden Jubilee event on July 19, 2014. The Chief Guest at this event was the Honorable Pranab Mukherjee, President of India.  Sitaraman was one of approximately 30 awardees recognized at this event which was held at the NITT campus in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu. In addition to Sitaraman, Madhavan Swaminathan of ECE was honored with the same Distinguished Alumnus Award for Excellence in Academic/Research.

A new Georgia Institute of Technology study investigated how quickly 32 animals urinate. It turns out that it’s all about the same. Even though an elephant’s bladder is 3,600 times larger than a cat’s (18 liters vs. 5 milliliters), both animals relieve themselves in about 20 seconds. In fact, all animals that weigh more than 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) urinate in that same time span.

On May 21st, the Department of Energy SunShot Initiative announced $10M for six new R&D projects that will advance innovative concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies.

Traumatic bone injuries such as blast wounds are often so severe that the body can’t effectively repair the damage on its own. To aid the recovery, clinicians inject patients with proteins called growth factors. The treatment is costly, requiring large amounts of expensive growth factors. The growth factors also disperse, creating unwanted bone formation in the area around the injury.

Teams from the Georgia Institute of Technology are recipients of four grants recently announced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The funding is designed to support research that will strengthen U.S. manufacturing and innovation performance across industries. 

Students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels have been awarded prestigious fellowships and scholarships this month, including the honors of Fulbright and Churchill scholarships.

Andrés García’s lab in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, which deals with really small-sized stuff, may be onto something really big, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), who provided the funding for the groundbreaking study, is paying close attention.