Perry P.J. Yang

Perry P.J. Yang

Perry Yang

Professor

Perry Yang is a Professor and Director of Eco Urban Lab of the School of City and Regional Planning and the School of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Perry’s work focuses on incorporating data analytics into urban design to improve ecological and energy performance of cities. He has published more than fifty articles and book chapters in this area from 2009, including the book Urban Systems Design: Creating Sustainable Smart Cities in the Internet of Things Era that he co-edited and co-authored six chapters in 2020 by Elsevier. He co-edited a 2019 theme issue Urban Systems Design: From Science for Design to Design in Science in Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, a prestigious journal in planning to explore new urban design research agenda and applications of emerging technologies, data analytics and urban automation to placemaking in the context of smart city movement. Beyond writing, Yang has been awarded more than ten prizes in international competitions continuously from 2005 in Asian cities, including the 2009 World Games Park at Kaohsiung, Taiwan, a project opened in July 2009 and featured by CNN as an “eco-friendly” venue. His urban design work was introduced in the January 2010 issue Ecological Urbanism at World Architecture (WA), a leading architecture journal by Tsinghua University. His recent design projects were shortlisted in the 2022 Asian Games Village in Hangzhou in 2017, the Musi River Revitalization at Hyderabad in 2018, and water town designs in China’s Yangtze River Delta region in 2020-2021 during the pandemic. From 2017 to 2023, he has been involved in smart city projects in Japan, including one of Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic sites at Urawa Misono, in collaboration with the University of Tokyo, Keio University and Global Carbon Project (GCP). 

Yang is a Visiting Professor at the Department of Urban Engineering of the University of Tokyo from 2022 to 2023, and a Visiting Scientist at CARES of the Cambridge University in Singapore in 2023. He served as the endowed Bayer Chair Professor of UNEP Institute at Tongji University from 2014 to 2018. Perry is also a faculty fellow of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems at Georgia Tech from 2018. He has served as a board member of the International Urban Planning and Environment Association (UPE) from 2007. He is a scientific committee member of International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE) from 2015. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty, he was a Fulbright Scholar and SPURS Fellow at MIT from 1999 to 2000, and an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the National University of Singapore from 2001 to 2008.

perry.yang@design.gatech.edu

(404) 894-2076

Departmental Bio


IRI Connections:

Kate Pride Brown

Kate Pride Brown

Kate Pride Brown

Associate Professor

Kate Pride Brown is an environmental and political sociologist whose research focuses on a range of issues, including environmental activism in Russia and conservation policy in the United States. She received her doctorate from Vanderbilt University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment. Her book, Saving the Sacred Sea: The Power of Civil Society in an Age of Authoritarianism and Globalization (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines the conflict between local and transnational environmentalists, multinational corporations, and the Russian government over the future of Lake Baikal, the largest, deepest and oldest freshwater lake on Earth. While she continues to study environmental issues in Russia, especially around Lake Baikal, Dr. Brown has also published research on water and energy politics and policy in the United States. She is currently studying the "nuclear renaissance" in the southeastern United States. Among other honors, she has received a Fulbright Fellowship, a Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State, and funding from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. Her research has appeared in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Energy Research and Social Science, Environmental Politics, Environmental Sociology, Ethnography, Memory Studies, Nature and Culture, Research in Political Sociology, Social Movement Studies, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, Water Policy and WIREs Water.

k.p.brown@gatech.edu

(404) 894-0616

Website

University, College, and School/Department

IRI Connections:

Christos E. Athanasiou

Christos E. Athanasiou

Christos Athanasiou

Assistant Professor

Christos Athanasiou is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech's Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, leading the Daedalus Lab. The lab's mission is to advance science and technology in biological and man-made systems for tackling grand social and environmental challenges with a major focus on energy storage, environmental remediation, and sustainable space exploration. Christos holds a Ph.D. in Photonics from EPFL. Initially, he carried out postdoctoral research at Brown University's School of Engineering, and later jointly at Brown University and MIT Media Lab.

athanasiou@gatech.edu

Christos E Athanasiou Profile

Research Focus Areas:
  • Aerospace
  • Additional Research:
    Disciplines:Structural Mechanics & MaterialsAE Multidisciplinary Research Areas:Large-Scale Computations, Data, and AnalyticsMechanics of Multifunctional Structures and MaterialsSpace Exploration and Earth MonitoringSustainable Transportation and Energy Systems

    IRI Connections:

    Neha Kumar

    Neha Kumar

    Neha Kumar

    Associate Professor
    BBISS Co-lead: Collaborative Social Impact

    Neha Kumar is an Associate Professor jointly appointed at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Her research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction and global sustainable development, with a focus on global health and community informatics. Her work contributes feminist perspectives to the design and integration of emerging technologies across marginalized contexts in the Global South. 

    Her research has been recognized by multiple ACM Best Paper and Honorable Mention awards. Neha received the College of Computing's Lockheed Inspirational Young Faculty Award (2017) and the Lockheed Excellence in Teaching Award (2019). She currently serves as the President of ACM SIGCHI. She earned her Ph.D. in Information Management Systems from UC Berkeley, Master’s degrees in Computer Science and Education from Stanford University, and Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Applied Math from UC Berkeley.

    neha.kumar@gatech.edu

    Departmental Bio

  • BBISS Initiative Lead Project - Collaborative Social Impact
  • Research Focus Areas:
  • Shaping the Human-Technology Frontier
  • Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation
  • Additional Research:

    Human-Computer Interaction for Global Development


    IRI Connections:

    Jennifer Kaiser

    Jennifer Kaiser

    Jennifer Kaiser

    Assistant Professor

    In the Kaiser group, we work to improve the understanding of the emissions and atmospheric processes that influence air quality and climate. Our research focuses largely on volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are reactive organic species that are precursors to ozone and aerosol. Our work is grounded in insights from field, and aimed at understanding atmospheric composition at broad spatial and temporal scales.

    jennifer.kaiser@ce.gatech.edu

    (404) 894-2644

    Departmental Bio

  • Lab Website
  • Research Focus Areas:
  • Social & Environmental Impacts
  • Additional Research:
    Climate/EnvironmentAtmospheric Chemistry, Aerosols & CloudsRemote SensingAtmospheric composition and chemistryBiogenic and anthropogenic emissionsGlobal chemistry-transport modelingIn-situ and remote sensing

    IRI Connections:

    Daniel Matisoff

    Daniel Matisoff

    Daniel Matisoff

    Professor

    Daniel Matisoff teaches and conducts research in the areas of public policy, energy policy, and corporate sustainability. His research focuses on the effectiveness and efficiency of comparative approaches to addressing environmental problems and the adoption and diffusion of energy technologies and policies. He currently is a fellow with the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainability, and is affiliated with the Strategic Energy Institute and Center for Urban Innovation. He has participated in over $4 million of sponsored research through the National Science Foundation, the European Union Center for Excellence, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Georgia Department of Transportation, and the National Electric Energy Testing Research and Applications Center. His recent research has resulted in publications in the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Environmental and Resource Economics, Energy Economics, Environmental Science and Technology, Energy Policy, and Business Strategy and the Environment, among other outlets. His current research interests include: evaluating the effectiveness of voluntary eco-labeling programs; the effectiveness of incentives for solar electricity; the adoption of smart grid technologies and policies; and the impact of large scale solar adoption on consumer rates and bills.

    matisoff@gatech.edu

    (404) 385-0504

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
  • Energy Utilization and Conservation
  • Policy & Economics
  • Additional Research:
    Building Technologies; Policy/Economics

    IRI Connections: