This evening, I spoke to a large group of Atlanta arts, education, and healthcare leaders at the Woodruff Arts Center about the role of the arts — not just at Georgia Tech but also in human progress — and I wanted to share my remarks about this extremely important subject.

At Georgia Tech, we’re driven by one mission — to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. Technology matters if it helps us live better lives. Improving the human condition is not just about engineering better systems or inventing smarter tools. It’s also about understanding and nurturing what makes us human and what makes us thrive: our creativity, our emotions, our capacity to imagine and connect.

Neuroscience is showing us that engaging in artistic expression — whether painting, composing music, or designing an immersive experience — or experiencing the artistic expression of others — reading poetry, watching a film, visiting the High Museum — literally changes our brains. It enhances empathy, fosters emotional resilience, and strengthens the brain circuits involved in creativity and problem-solving. In short, the arts help us think better and feel better.

The arts can also drive prosperity. 

This morning, we woke up to the news of the award of a new Nobel Prize in Economics to three scholars who have documented how much human progress depends on creativity. From the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, progress has always come from a simple but powerful engine: the generation and diffusion of new ideas. Joel Mokyr, an economic historian, reminds us that societies prosper when they cultivate a culture of curiosity and learning. Growth theorists like Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt show that innovation — what Schumpeter called creative destruction — is the source of long-term prosperity and opportunity. In other words, it is not the accumulation of capital that makes our nation great; it’s the constant generation and free exchange of new ideas — a culture that celebrates creation and thinking outside the box. 

Georgia Tech has trained engineers and scientists for 140 years. For our graduates to be the innovators we need them to be, they need to be creative, and they need to be able to imagine new and better futures … and there’s nothing better than the arts to develop that muscle.

For a long time, Georgia Tech kept the arts somewhat at the margins of our core mission. But that is changing. Today, we recognize that, to improve the human condition and to innovate, we must integrate the analytical and the imaginative, the scientific and the expressive.

That’s why we created the School of Arts, Entertainment, and Creative Technologies and, with it, new degrees that prepare students to shape the future where technology and creativity merge. It’s also why we’re developing Creative Quarter — a vibrant space of creation and experimentation, where artists, engineers, and scientists can collaborate to invent new forms of expression and new modes of human experience.

And as we launch our Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society, we’re deepening our understanding of how the brain enables creativity — and how creative practices, in turn, can enhance brain health, learning, and innovation.

The neuroarts remind us that creativity is a fundamental human capacity and one of our greatest engines for discovery and progress. At Georgia Tech, we’re weaving that understanding into our very fabric — ensuring that technology serves not just efficiency, but imagination; not just intelligence, but empathy; not just progress, but the full flourishing of the human spirit.