News and Events
Learn about the College of Design's latest accomplishments and our signature design events!

A Local Perspective, Globally Realized
School of Architecture students recently explored one of the world’s rarest ecosystems to study how architecture can simultaneously protect the environment and elevate human community.
As the habitat of the mountain gorillas in Rwanda grows, farmers are being displaced. Georgia Tech student architects met with relocated communities, visited the Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and presented designs for model communities to house the relocated people.
Recovering History with Digital Design
School of Architecture Assistant Professor Danielle Willkens can do amazing things with digital architecture reconstructions, including taking people back to Selma, Alabama in 1965.
A Georgia Tech team exhibit, which won a People’s Choice Award while on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History recently, will be on display in the School of Architecture. Willkens leads the team of student researchers who created the exhibit.
Students Touch the Future of Music at Guthman Competition
For Georgia Tech's music technology majors, the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition represents the pinnacle event of their creative study and research. Students help produce the concert, exhibit their work, and learn from the judges and competitors. They even get to play the instruments!

Georgia Tech Plans Tokyo Redesign Using Social Data
Students in the Tokyo Smart City studio, of the Eco Urban Lab, are changing the way we plan cities. Using machine learning techniques on data from smartphones, GPS, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, students develop proposals based on measured human experience.
GIS Study Reveals: Poorly-built Cities Strain Romance
Clio Andris and her team use maps to study how relationships are situated in cities: whether people live near each other, whether it is easy for them to see each other, and what kinds of activities and amenities they can easily access.
She recently realized city layouts (where the buildings are, how public transportation works, even where sidewalks are placed) affect romantic couples.
FOREST
A Robot and Human Experience
FOREST is the performative outcome of an NSF-funded project aimed at enhancing trust between humans and robots through sound and gesture.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology found that embedding emotion-driven sounds and gestures in robotic arms help establish trust and likability between humans and their AI counterparts.
Tzu-Chieh Kurt Hong Wins 2002 ARCC Dissertation Award
The Board of Directors of the Architectural Research Centers Consortium awards recognize and advance state-of-the-art research in architecture and related design fields. Kurt Hong won the award for his Ph.D. dissertation that examined “reworking (solving) the perennial problem of shape recognition (embedding) in CAD modeling.”

Industrial Design Faculty Explain Holiday Product Design
As much as consumers felt the effects of supply chain backlogs during this year’s holiday season, industrial designers and entire holiday merchandise teams are dealing with them, too. Three School of Industrial Design faculty join colleagues from the Scheller College of Business to explain how seasonal products are made and the results of a holiday product design cycle challenged by a pandemic and resulting complications.
Design Faculty on Two NSF Civic Innovation Challenge Awards
Two of the 17 NSF Civic Innovation Challenge Awards (narrowed down from 52), include College of Design faculty. Their interdisciplinary work provides community-based solutions to mobility issues and disaster resilience.
Subhro Guhathakurta and Kari Watkins are on the Piloting On-Demand Multimodal Transit in Atlanta project. This project aims to synchronize on-demand shuttle services with Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) services and real-time feeds, and deploy these services in targeted transit deserts. Nisha Botchwey is on the Visualizing Resilience: BIPOC Youth Advocacy Through Mapmaking project. This project will deliver a curriculum to support youth advocacy for infrastructure projects in their communities.

Flourishing Communities Collaborative Wins PIT-UN Grant
Julie Kim, associate chair for the Georgia Tech School of Architecture, is committed to empower entire communities through design thinking and technology.
For several months, Kim, her fellow faculty, and their undergraduate and graduate students have leveraged Georgia Tech resources to address critical problems in Atlanta’s Westside neighborhood.
“That’s why this grant is so special,” Kim said. “We’re working hand in hand with the community. We’re providing them with specific tools that allow them to understand how to use design thinking to solve their problems.”
Photo: Monica Rizk, M Arch 2022
New School Chairs Announced

New Master of Science in Urban Analytics Launches Fall 2021
The Georgia Tech College of Design is proud to announce its newest interdisciplinary degree, the Master of Science in Urban Analytics (MSUA). The School of City and Regional Planning will administer the degree in partnership with the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), and School of Interactive Computing (IC).
Recent College Work
Our faculty publish their research and academic advancement to several professional journals, as well as to SmarTech, the Georgia Tech library’s repository for Institute intellectual property. Use the links below to experience some of our most recent work!
- “What Could Go Wrong?” Buntrock, Dana
- “BIM-enabled facilities operation and maintenance: A review” Pishdad-Bozorgi, Pardis
- “Sustainable and Resilient Urban Water Systems: The Role of Decentralization and Planning” Leigh, Nancey Green
- “Instrument Activity Detection in Polyphonic Music Using Deep Neural Networks” Gururani, Siddharth and Lerch, Alexander