Georgia Tech Celebrates Innovators Advancing Research Into Real-World Impact

Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing, part of the Office of Commercialization, hosted the inaugural 2026 Innovator Awards Celebration on Sept. 30 at the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center. 

The awards spotlighted achievements int research, inventions, and entrepreneurial work. 

“Georgia Tech’s innovation ecosystem is built on people who keep pushing discoveries toward real-world use,” said Mary Albertson, executive director of Technology Licensing in Georgia Tech’s Office of Commercialization. “The Innovator Awards recognize the faculty, students, and entrepreneurs whose work helps turn research into technologies and companies that can make a difference.” 

Innovator of the Year 

Jie Xu 
Principal research scientist and chemical and biological systems branch head, Aerospace, Transportation & Advanced Systems Laboratory, Georgia Tech Research Institute 

Student of the Year 

Christopher Bresette 
Postdoctoral Researcher in David Ku’s lab, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering 

CEO of the Year 

Baratunde Cola 
Professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Materials Science and Engineering; founder and CEO, Carbice Corporation 

Startup of the Year: Software/Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning 

InfraVana 
A Georgia Tech spinout developing AI infrastructure tools, including technology to optimize large language model inference and distributed AI systems. 

Tushar Krishna 
Associate professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; associate director, Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies; co-founder, InfraVana. 

Arijit Raychowdhury 
Professor and Steve W. Chaddick Chair, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; co-founder, InfraVana. 

Startup of the Year: Hardware/Deeptech 

Stellar Scale Nano Fabrication Inc. 

Develops high-precision additive manufacturing systems for nanoscale devices and inertial confinement fusion. 

Harnjoo Kim 

Georgia Tech alumnus, Ph.D. in mechanical engineering; co-founder and chief engineer, Stellar Scale Nano Fabrication Inc. 

Sourabh Saha 

Associate professor and Woodruff Faculty Fellow, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; co-founder, Stellar Scale Nano Fabrication Inc. 

Harry Watkins 

Undergraduate student, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; co-founder and president, Stellar Scale Nano Fabrication Inc. 

Impactful Innovation Awards 

The Impactful Innovation Awards recognize innovations with the potential to significantly influence how industries address current problems. 

James Dahlman and GuideRx 
McCamish Foundation Early Career Associate Professor, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering 
Utilizing a proprietary high throughput screening platform, GuideRx has developed a new way to rapidly and efficiently develop nanoparticles to deliver genetic drugs beyond the liver. They can now run up to 20,000 drug delivery experiments simultaneously, all in vivo. Once they find drug delivery vehicles that safely target new tissues, they develop genetic drugs internally or team up with strategic partners. (Acquired by Beam Therapeutics.) 

Mark Prausnitz and Micron Biomedical 
Regents’ Professor and J. Erskine Love Jr. Chair, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; co-founder, Micron Biomedical 

Micron Biomedical has developed microneedle patches for drug and vaccine delivery. Using a dissolvable polymer, they have developed microneedle patches for influenza vaccines suitable for self-administration and demonstrated vaccine efficacy through a series of animal studies. 

Jeffrey Skolnick and Ovacens Inc. 
Regents’ Professor, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, and Mary & Maisie Gibson Chair in Computational Systems Biology, School of Biological Sciences; OVAcens Inc. research collaborator 

OVAcens gives women at risk of ovarian cancer a diagnostic for detecting Stage 1 and precursors to potential ovarian cancer. It is based on metabolomic fingerprints, detected from mass spectrometry data from blood draws using AI developed in the Skolnick Lab. 

Patent Leadership Awards 

Deepakraj “Deepak” Divan 
Professor emeritus, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, and John E. Pippin Chair in Wireless Communications, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Sundaresan Jayaraman 
Professor, School of Materials Science and Engineering 

Sungmee Park 
Principal research scientist, School of Materials Science and EngineeringMark Prausnitz 
Regents’ Professor and and J. Erskine Love Jr. Chair, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering 

John Rose 
Georgia Tech Research Institute 

Disclosure Leadership Awards 

Yue Chen 
Assistant professor, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory 

Steve Diggle 
Professor, School of Biological Sciences 

Baoyun Ge 
Assistant professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Gabriel Kwong 
Professor and Robert A. Milton Chair, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory 

Matthew McDowell 
Professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and Carter N. Paden Jr. Distinguished Chair for Innovation in Material Science and Metals Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering 

Prithiv Premkumar 
Graduate Researcher, School of Interactive Computing 

Neel Shah 
Ph.D. student, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering 

Jeffrey Skolnick 
Regents’ Professor, School of Biological Sciences 

Stephen Sprigle 
Professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Industrial Design 

Jin Xu 
Research faculty, Tech AI 

Woon-Hong Yeo 
Associate professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering 

Fan Zhang 
Assistant professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering