Ellen is Director of the Master of Science in Urban Design degree, an authority on sustainable suburban redevelopment, and a leading urbanist. Author of over 100 articles, she is co-author with June Williamson of the retrofitting suburbia book series documenting successful retrofits of aging big box stores, malls, and office parks into healthier and more sustainable places. Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, (Wiley, 2009, 2011) received a PROSE award as the best architecture and urban planning book of 2009 and has been featured in The New York Times, Time Magazine, Harvard Business Review, NPR, PBS, TED and other prominent venues. Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges (Wiley, 2020) expands on the first book examining how new retrofits are helping communities disrupt automobile dependence, improve public health, support an aging population, leverage social capital for equity, compete for jobs, and add water and energy resilience. 

Ellen serves on several national boards and committees, is former Chair of the Board of the Congress for the New Urbanism, lectures widely and conducts community workshops. In both her teaching and research she focuses on helping communities address new challenges that they were never designed for – whether that’s through her unique database of successful suburban retrofits or studio classes on anticipating autonomous vehicles, coping with climate change or suburban blight. She taught at UVA and MIT before joining Georgia Tech as Architecture Program Director from 2000-2009.

Miguel Granier serves as a distinguished external fellow of the Strategic Energy Institute, and is the managing director of Cox Cleantech Accelerator by gener8tor. He has nearly two decades of experience financing businesses from startup to growth stage. As the founder/managing director of Invested Development (ID) and the Impact Factoring Fund (IFF), and founding investment manager for First Light Ventures, he led investments in dozens of startups across nine countries and three continents. Miguel began his career in finance as a loan officer for the global micro-finance organization ACCION and has worked for the insurance giant Fidelity National Financial in New York and the Delter Business Institute in Beijing, China. 

Miguel holds or has held board positions at more than a dozen start-ups, including Growing Energy Labs, Inc (acquired by Hanwha/Q-Cells), Simpa Networks (acquired by Engie), OnFarm (acquired by SWIIM Systems), and iHub (acquired by ccHub). He has also served on the boards of several non-profit organizations, including Greentown Labs, Village Capital, and Global Growers Network. 

Miguel has earned two Masters’ degrees from Georgia Tech in City and Regional Planning and Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management. In addition, he has been an adjunct faculty at the Monterrey Institute of International Studies, Northeastern University, and Georgia Tech. 

Dr. Manos Antonakakis (PhD’12) is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and an adjunct faculty member in the College of Computing (CoC), at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is responsible for the Astrolavos Lab, where students conduct research in the areas of Attack Attribution, Network Security and Privacy, Intrusion Detection, and Data Mining. In May 2012, he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech.

Before joining the Georgia Tech ECE faculty ranks, Dr. Antonakakis held the Chief Scientist role at Damballa. He currently serves as the co-chair of the Academic Committee for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG). In his tenure at Georgia Tech ECE, Dr. Antonakakis has raised several tens of millions in research funding as Primary Investigator from government agencies and the private sector. He is the author of several U.S. patents and more than 20 academic publications in top academic conferences. He has served as a program committee member for all top tier security conferences.