Clean, Old-Fashioned Collaboration: Engineering the Future of Healthcare at Georgia Tech and UGA

If you’ve lived in Georgia long enough, you’ve almost certainly heard the friendly jabs tossed across divided Thanksgiving tables. On one side, a smirk and a mention of the “North Avenue Trade School.” On the other, a pointed retort: “To hell with Georgia.”

Few rivalries run deeper than the one known as “Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate,” the annual showdown between Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia (UGA). On Friday afternoon, November 29, the two will face off in one of the most anticipated matchups in years. These teams don’t like each other, and for a few hours every year, neither do friends, families, and even significant others.

Off the field, however, the schools are proving that collaboration, not competition, is the schools’ true strength.

For more than a century, Georgia’s flagship universities have united around complementary strengths, tackling the state’s biggest challenges together. That starts with making Georgians healthier.

“When Georgia Tech and UGA combine their strengths, together we create solutions that neither institution could achieve alone,” said Tim Lieuwen, executive vice president for Research at Georgia Tech. “These collaborations accelerate innovation in healthcare, improve lives across our state, and demonstrate that partnership — not rivalry — is Georgia’s most powerful tradition."

“The common denominator between these two great institutions is the populations they serve,” said Chris King, interim vice president for Research at UGA. “We have a duty to find solutions that help improve the quality of life for all Georgians, and that’s what these partnerships are all about.”

From programs like the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance (Georgia CTSA) to the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT), researchers at UGA and Georgia Tech are setting rivalries aside to build lasting partnerships that fuel innovation and expand the workforce to meet the state’s needs.

Pushing Cell Therapy Across the Goal Line
CMaT is an NSF-funded consortium of more than seven universities and 40 member companies. At Georgia Tech and UGA, teams are conducting many early stage translational projects to improve manufacturing of cell-based therapeutics.

One joint project between Andrés García, executive director of Georgia Tech’s Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering & Bioscience, and John Peroni, the Dr. Steeve Giguere Memorial Professor in Large Animal Medicine in UGA’s College of Veterinary Medicine, addresses treatment of bacterial infections that can follow bone repair surgeries.

Bone fractures and non-union defects often require surgical implants, but 1-5% are compromised by bacterial infection, costing hospitals more than $1.9 billion annually. Current treatments are limited to sustained, high doses of antibiotics, which are less effective and can generate antibiotic-resistant bacteria. García and Peroni are engineering synthetic biomaterials that locally deliver antimicrobial agents to eliminate infections and promote bone repair.

Steven Stice, D.W. Brooks Distinguished Professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar at UGA’s Regenerative Bioscience Center, is also working with Georgia Tech’s Andrei Fedorov, professor and Rae S. and Frank H. Neely Chair in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, to improve the quality and control of producing natural, cell-derived healing materials for regenerative medicine.

Adult cells secrete tiny, bubble-like vesicles that help other cells heal and regenerate tissue. Stice developed methods to boost vesicle production, while Fedorov created a probe that accelerates the process.

“Cells simply don’t secrete these healing vesicles in the quantities needed for scalable, clinical-grade treatments,” said Stice, UGA lead and co-principal investigator for CMaT. “Our collaborative work changes that, accelerating production in a way that finally makes large-scale regenerative therapies feasible.”

“Georgia Tech and UGA's collective commitment to advancing science and technology exceeds the intensity of our athletic rivalry,” Fedorov said. “Together, we’re advancing cell and therapy biomanufacturing to develop lifesaving treatments for the most devastating diseases.”
 
Georgia Tech’s Francisco Robles and UGA’s Lohitash Karumbaiah are using manufactured T cells to target cancer. Robles, who leads the Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy Lab in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, developed quantitative Oblique Back-illumination Microscopy (qOBM) to monitor tumor growth in real time. The method allows scientists to visualize patient-derived glioblastoma cell clusters generated in the Karumbaiah Lab, tracking tumor structure and behavior at various stages.

“Assessing therapeutic potency is often complex, costly, and ineffective for solid tumors,” Karumbaiah said. “qOBM simplifies the process by providing real-time, label-free monitoring of therapeutic efficacy against 3D solid tumors.”   

The work could help doctors personalize cancer treatments by providing early, detailed signs of whether a therapy is working.

“This technique is more compact and affordable and lets us watch T cells attack cell cultures in real time,” Robles said. “This breakthrough could transform how we study disease and screen new treatments.”

A Playbook for Local Healthcare
Created in 2007 by the National Institutes of Health, Georgia CTSA is one of several NIH-funded national partnerships advancing new health therapeutics and practices. Since 2017, it has comprised UGA, Georgia Tech, Emory, and the Morehouse School of Medicine. The alliance’s reach extends far beyond campus borders, bringing together researchers, clinicians, professional societies, and community and industry partners to identify local health challenges and translate research into practical solutions.

And out of this alliance have come many collaborative studies among CTSA’s members.

One, the Georgia Health Landscape Dashboard, is a tool to identify local health gaps and connect regional health professionals or policymakers with the researchers who can best address their community’s challenges. UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences Associate Professors Alison Berg and Dee Warmath, along with community health engagement coordinator Courtney Still Brown, are working with Georgia Tech’s Jon Duke, director of the Center for Health Analytics and Informatics at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and a principal research scientist in the School of Interactive Computing.

The dashboard has already helped match researchers with communities by combining epidemiological data with “community voice” insights through surveys of residents and local leaders.

For example, when examining diabetes data, the dashboard indicates Randolph County has the state’s highest prevalence, despite declining by about 8% between 2021-24. Meanwhile, Treutlen County’s rate increased 29.2% during the same period. Perhaps Treutlen’s need for diabetic care is a growing concern, while Randolph’s is being addressed. And perhaps Hancock County, which ranks diabetes its top priority in the community voice category, is in search of immediate solutions.

“The Landscape Dashboard is a fantastic example of how the unique expertise found at Georgia Tech and UGA can be brought together to create something truly valuable for all Georgia,” Duke said. “By bringing together a range of data sources and health analytics approaches, this collaboration has created a tool that delivers novel insights into health, community, and policy across the state.”

Supported by UGA Cooperative Extension and the Biomedical and Translational Sciences Institute, the project leverages a network of agents in every county across the state. Warmath said the project’s strength lies in its ability to connect research with real-world needs.

“To build a community-responsive ecosystem for biomedical research, scientists must recognize local needs, share progress with communities to foster trust and acceptance, recruit clinicians and industry partners, and strengthen the relationships between patient and caregiver,” Warmath said.

Teaming Up for Maternal Health
Warmath and a team of researchers at UGA, Georgia Tech, and Emory are also collaborating on an NIH-funded project uniting experts in maternal health, biostatistics, and consumer science to explore how wearable technologies could improve delivery-room care.

During childbirth, clinicians monitor countless maternal and fetal vitals — contractions, heart rates, oxygen levels, kidney function, and more. What new insights, the researchers asked, could advanced wearable technologies offer in the delivery room, and what barriers might prevent their use?

Using nationwide surveys and focus groups, the team gathered information from a representative sample of pregnant, postpartum, and reproductive-age women, as well as healthcare professionals, to examine acceptance of wearable health technologies during labor and delivery. In their analysis of this rich data source, the team is identifying key variables that reveal gaps in technology acceptance and the unique needs of diverse maternal populations.

Each partner institution brings unique expertise. At Emory, principal investigator Suchitra Chandrasekaran contributes clinical insights from direct patient care. At UGA, Warmath applies her knowledge in consumer science to analyze end-user motivation, attitudes, and behaviors. At Georgia Tech, experts like Sarah Farmer in the Center for Advanced Communications Policy’s Home Lab facilitate large-scale data collection.

With data collection now complete, the team is analyzing results to inform future design and deployment of wearable technologies.
“Each school has a different perspective,” Farmer said. “It’s not as simple as one school does this but doesn’t do that. Each has their expertise, but they offer different perspectives and different resources that, when pooled, can make our research that much more effective.”

Whether advancing maternal health, mapping Georgia’s health needs, or engineering next-generation therapies, UGA and Georgia Tech continue to prove that collaboration is Georgia’s strongest tradition. Further, the undergraduate and graduate students who work in these labs and others represent the state’s highly skilled workforce of tomorrow.

“When our institutions work together, Georgia wins,” Warmath said.

— By David Mitchell