Directors
Jeannette Yen, Director
Professor, School of Biology Professor
Jeannette Yen received her Ph.D. in Oceanography at the University of Washington in 1982. She received tenure
at SUNY-Stony Brook in 1995 and was promoted to Full Professor in Biology
at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002. In 2004, Dr. Yen was Chief
Scientist on a twelve day oceanography research cruise to Antarctica. With
the formation of the Center for Biologically Inspired Design, Jeannette
became Director of CBID at Georgia Tech in 2005. Dr. Yen is an oceanographer
working at the interface between animal behavior, fluid mechanics and environmental
sciences.
Her research in aquatic ecology examines signal recognition
by planktonic copepods in a transitional fluid regime and
their capability for three-dimensional information processing. The goal
of this research is to determine how aquatic microcrustaceans are able
to discriminate biological signals from background small-scale turbulent
fluid flow. Using high resolution optical techniques, her laboratory team
examines plankton responses to physically-derived flow and biologically-created
cues.One current research focus is on 3D mating strategies of oceanic plankton,
and how copepods use their asymmetric linear array of sensors
to guide chemical trail tracking in a low Re regime. Research is supported
by the National Science Foundation’s Offices of
Biological Oceanography, Sensory Systems, and Polar Programs
as well as by the Office of Naval Research. Professor Yen
teaches freshman biology, animal behavior, and sensory ecology. By supporting
efforts to raise the visibility of women in science, Jeannette continues
to promote diversity and equity in academia.
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Marc Weissburg, Co-Director
Associate Professor School of Biology
Marc Weissburg received a PhD from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at
SUNY Stony Brook in 1990, received tenure at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2003, and became co-Director
of the Center for Biologically Inspired Design in 2005. He has a long standing interest in comparative and
interdisciplinary approaches that lead to understanding animal solutions. His research concerns the mechanisms
of information acquisition for fluid mechanical and chemical signals by animals, and the consequences of
perceptual abilities for populations and communities. This work merges sensory physiology, biology, ecology,
fluid physics and chemistry.
Dr. Weissburg has substantial collaborations with engineers and chemists to both understand the structure of
natural signals, and use principles derived from biological sensing strategies to enhance sensing techniques in
human built systems. Work in these areas has been funded by the Office of Naval Research, the Defense Advanced
Research Project Agency, the NSF Office of Polar Programs, and NSF programs in Oceanography and Sensory Systems.
He teaches comparative physiology, ecology, a laboratory in fluid mechanics of organisms, and is director of the
Research Experience for Undergraduates summer program in Aquatic Chemical Ecology at GA Tech.
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Ashok K. Goel, Co-Director
Associate Professor, School of Interactive Computing
Director, Design Intelligence Laboratory
Ashok K. Goel is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science
in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology and
Director of the Design Intelligence Laboratory in the College of Computing.
Conducting research in design AI and design cognition, his work on design
emphasizes multi-modal, knowledge-based techniques of reasoning and learning,
including functional modeling, analogical reasoning, visual reasoning and meta-reasoning.
Creative design of physical systems and design of self-adaptive software agents form
the context for much of this research.
The long-term, big-picture questions that drive this research are:
(1) What is creativity in design, how may we build computer systems that can generate creative designs,
and how might we build interactive environments to aid human creativity?
(2) What is reflection in intelligent agents, how may we design software agents that can
reflect on their knowledge, reasoning, and behavior, and how might reflection enable
self-adaptation and self-explanation?
(3) What is visual reasoning in design cognition, and how may we build interactive environments
and tools that use the human capacity for visual reasoning?
From the viewpoint of design, we develop theories, techniques and tools that enable
innovative design of physical systems and design of self-adaptive software agents.
The goals of the research on conceptual design of physical systems
(e.g., biologically inspired engineering design) is to develop theories of creativity
in design and to build interactive tools for aiding innovative design. The goals of the
research on design of self-adaptive software agents (e.g., game-playing agents) are to
develop theories of reflection in intelligent agents, and to build interactive tools for
supporting adaptations to designs of software agents.
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Craig Tovey, Co-Director
Professor School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Craig A. Tovey is an operations researcher with specialties in
combinatorial optimization and probabilistic analysis. He has made many contributions
to basic theory and application in OR, particularly in local search algorithms.
In addition he has done influential work by cross-pollinating OR with political
science and animal behavior, such as the introduction of computational complexity and
epsilon-equilibria to voting theory, and of probabilistic modeling to the study
of honey bee colonies. He has published papers in a wide variety of highly ranked journals
and conferences, including, in the following fields:
Optimization: Mathematics of Operations Research, Algorithmica, Mathematical Programming,
Journal of Algorithms, SODA,SIAM Comp., SIAM Review; Discrete Mathematics: Journal of
Combinatorial Theory (B), American Mathematics Monthly, SIAM Discrete; Robotics and AI:
ICRA, IROS,AAAI; Biology: PNAS, Animal Behaviour, Behavior; Voting Theory and Political
Economy: JET, SCW; Applications: Operations Research, IEEE-CHMT,IEEE Trans. CADICS,Interfaces..
Other referred publications include a Scottish Country dance in the First San Francisco
Collection and a humorous article in the Journal of Irreproducible
Results. Tovey received his A.B. Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College in 1977, and an M.S.
in Computer Science and Ph.D. in Operations Research, advised by George Dantzig, in 1981
from Stanford University. He then joined the faculty at Georgia
Tech, where he is Professor in ISyE and CoC, punctuated by stints as Visiting Scholar,
Bell Labs, NRC Senior Associate, NPS, and Principal Software Developer (CPLEX versions 7.5
and 8.0), ILOG, Inc. He has consulted for AT&T, Weyerhaeuser, Freddy Mac, IDSC, and other
companies. Honors and awards include 2nd U.S. Olympiad, Georgia Tech Institute Fellow, NSF PYI
1985 (one of two in OR), Jacob Wolfowitz Prize. His Erdös number is 1. He loves chocolate,
music, books, religion, friendship, dance, math, cooking and eating, (and, according to his
family and friends, talking.) He is especially proud of his email alias, cat@gatech.edu,
and of his family, wife Gail, and four amazing children, Kendl, David, Leo, and William.
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