Suresh Sitaraman is a Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and leads the Flexible Hybrid Electronics Initiative at Georgia Tech and directs the Computer-Aided Simulation of Packaging Reliability (CASPaR) Lab at Georgia Tech. He is a Thrust Leader/Faculty Member, Reliability/Mechanical Design Research, 3D Systems Packaging Research Center; a Faculty Member, Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute; a Faculty Member, Interconnect and Packaging Center, an SRC Center of Excellence, Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology; a Faculty Member, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Nanotechnlogy Research Center, Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology; a Faculty Member, Institute of Materials. Dr. Suresh Sitaraman's research is exploring new approaches to develop next-generation microsystems. In particular, his research focuses on the design, fabrication, characterization, modeling and reliability of micro-scale and nano-scale structures intended for microsystems used in applications such as aerospace, automotive, computing, telecommunicating, medical, etc. Sitaraman's research is developing physics-based computational models to design flexible as well as rigid microsystems and predict their warped geometry and reliability. His virtual manufacturing tools are able to simulate sequential fabrication and assembly process mechanics to be able to enhance the overall yield, even before prototypes are built. Sitaraman's work is developing free-standing, compliant interconnect technologies that can mechanically decouple the chip from the substrate without compromising the overall electrical functionality. This work is producing single-path and multi-path interconnect technologies as well as nanowire and carbon nanotube interconnects for electrical and thermal applications, and such interconnect technologies can be employed in flexible as well as 3D microelectronic systems. Sitaraman's research is also developing innovative material characterization techniques such as the stressed super layer technique as well as magnetic actuation test that can be used to study monotonic and fatigue crack propagation in nano- and micro-scale thin film interfaces. In addition, Sitaraman has developed fundamental modeling methodologies combined with leading-edge experimentation techniques to study delamination in the dielectric material and copper interface used in back-end-of-the-line (BEOL) stacks and through-silicon vias as well as epoxy/copper and epoxy/glass interfaces as in microelectronic packaging and photovoltaic module applications. Examining the long-term operational as well as accelerated thermal cycling reliability of solder interconnects, his work has direct implications in implantable medical devices, photovoltaic modules, computers and smart devices as well as rugged automobile and aerospace applications. Through the above-mentioned fundamental and applied research and development pursuits, Sitaraman's work aims to address some of the grand challenges associated with clean energy, health care, personal mobility, security, clean environment, food and water, and sustainable infrastructure

Oliver Pierron joined Georgia Tech in summer 2007. Prior, he was a senior engineer at the R&D center of Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc. in San Jose, California. Pierron's research group investigates the mechanical properties of small-scale materials with emphasis on the degradation properties (fracture, fatigue, creep). The scientific contribution of this research is to develop a fundamental understanding of the degradation mechanisms at the nanoscale while the engineering motivation is to assess and predict the structural reliability of devices and systems fabricated with emerging technologies. An underlying challenge is to develop experimental techniques that permit to accurately measure these properties. Pierron's research is currently sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Jun Ueda received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1994, 1996, and 2002 all in Mechanical Engineering. From 1996 to 2000, he was a Research Engineer at the Advanced Technology Research and Development Center, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Japan. He was an Assistant Professor of Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, from 2002 to 2008. During 2005-2008, he was a visiting scholar and lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the G. W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2008 where he is currently a Professor. He received Fanuc FA Robot Foundation Best Paper Award in 2005, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award in 2009, Advanced Robotics Best Paper Award in 2015, and Nagamori Award in 2021. 

Dr. Emily D. Sanders is an Assistant Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. She obtained her Ph.D. at Georgia Tech in 2021, where she developed new topology optimization methods for design of tension-only cable nets, elastostatic cloaking devices, and multiscale structures and components. Dr. Sanders hold a bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University and a master’s degree from Stanford University.

Devesh Ranjan was named the Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr. School Chair in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and took over the role on January 1, 2022. He previously served as the Associate Chair for Research, and Ring Family Chair in the Woodruff School. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering and serves as a co-director of the $100M Department of Defense-funded University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH). At Georgia Tech, Ranjan has held several leadership positions including chairing ME’s Fluid Mechanics Research Area Group (2017 - 2018), serving as ME’s Associate Chair for Research (2019-present), and as co-chair of the “Hypersonics as a System” task-force, and serving as Interim Vice-President for Interdisciplinary Research (Feb 2021-June 2021). 

Ranjan joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2014. Before coming to Georgia Tech, he was a director’s research fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2008) and Morris E. Foster Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at Texas A&M University (2009-2014). He earned a bachelor's degree from the NIT-Trichy (India) in 2003, and master's and Ph.D. degrees from the UW-Madison in 2005 and 2007 respectively, all in mechanical engineering. 

Ranjan’s research focuses on the interdisciplinary area of power conversion, complex fluid flows involving shock and hydrodynamic instabilities, and the turbulent mixing of materials in extreme conditions, such as supersonic and hypersonic flows. Ranjan is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and has received numerous awards for his scientific contributions, including the DOE-Early Career Award (first GT recipient), the NSF CAREER Award, and the US AFOSR Young Investigator award. He was also named the J. Erskine Love Jr. Faculty Fellow in 2015. He was invited to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s 2016 US Frontiers in Engineering Symposium. For his educational efforts and mentorship activity, he has received CATERPILLAR Teaching Excellence Award from College of Engineering at Texas A&M, as well as 2013 TAMU ASME Professor Mentorship Award from TAMU student chapter of the ASME. At Georgia Tech, Ranjan served as a Provost’s Teaching and Learning Fellow (PTLF) from 2018-2020, and was named 2021 Governor’s Teaching Fellow. He was also named Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Fellow for 2020-21. 

Ranjan is currently part of a 10-member Technical Screening Committee of the NAE’s COVID-19 Call for Engineering Action taskforce, an initiative to help fight the coronavirus pandemic. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Shock Waves and was a former Associate Editor for the ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering.

Dr. Christopher Saldaña began working at Georgia Tech in 2014. Prior, Dr. Saldaña previously held the Harold and Inge Marcus Career Professorship at the Pennsylvania State University and worked as a research engineer at M4 Sciences Corporation. Dr. Saldaña has also previously held visiting affiliations/positions with the US Air Force Research Laboratory, the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore, India), Technische Universität Dortmund (Dortmund, Germany), Autodesk, and Sandia National Laboratories. He has received several awards, including an NSF CAREER award, the Robert J. Hocken SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer award and an R&D100 Technology Award. He serves as an Associate Editor for IISE Transactions (Design and Manufacturing) and serves on the Editorial Boards of Manufacturing Letters, Computer Aided Design and Applications, and the ASTM Journal of Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing.

Dr. Gregory S. Sawicki is an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech with appointments in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biological Sciences. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University ('99) and a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of California-Davis ('01). Dr. Sawicki completed his Ph.D. in Human Neuromechanics at the University of Michigan, Ann-Arbor ('07) and was an NIH-funded Post-Doctoral Fellow in Integrative Biology at Brown University ('07-'09). Dr. Sawicki was a faculty member in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at NC State and UNC Chapel Hill from 2009-2017. In summer of 2017, he joined the faculty at Georgia Tech with appointments in Mechanical Engineering 3/4 and Biological Sciences 1/4.

Andrés Garcia's research centers on cellular and tissue engineering, areas which integrate engineering and biological principles to control cell function in order to restore and/or enhance function in injured or diseased organs. Specifically, his research focuses on fundamental structure-function relationships governing cell-biomaterials interactions for bone and muscle applications. Current projects involve the analysis and manipulation of cell adhesion receptors and their extracellular matrix ligands. For example, a mechanochemical system has been developed to analyze the contributions of receptor binding, clustering, and interactions with other cellular structural proteins to cell adhesion strength. In another research thrust, bio-inspired surfaces, including micropatterned substrates, are engineered to control cell adhesion in order to direct signaling and cell function. For instance, biomolecular surfaces have been engineered to target specific adhesion receptors to modulate cell signaling and differentiation. These biomolecular strategies are applicable to the development of 3D hybrid scaffolds for enhanced tissue reconstruction,"smart" biomaterials, and cell growth supports. Finally, genetic engineering approaches have been applied to engineer cells that form bone tissue for use in the development of mineralized templates for enhanced bone repair.

Faces of Research - Profile Article

Dr. Wood completed his graduate training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While there he worked under the guidance of Drs. H. Harry Asada and Roger Kamm to develop and use microfluidics to identify mechanisms governing vascular geometry. 

During his postdoc, Dr. Wood worked under Dr. Kevin Haigis (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School) and Dr. Douglas Lauffenburger (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to use systems biology to identify novel signaling mechanisms driving neuronal death in Alzheimer's disease and epithelial cell death during intestinal inflammation.