Earlier this month, I had the great pleasure of speaking at the investiture of our friend, Mike Shannon, as president of the University of North Georgia (UNG) in beautiful Dahlonega. Mike is a two-time alumnus (M.S. HP 2003, Ph.D. NRE 2009), a nuclear engineer, and a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Army. [...] Mike is a rare breed, and it’s no wonder the Board of Regents tapped him to be UNG’s president. However, Mike is just the latest Yellow Jacket to accept a leadership position in academia or public service in Georgia.
Georgia Tech researchers are creating new diagnostics, treatments, and devices to help us fight our worst diseases, including cancer. Three recent grants from the newly established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) will help us accelerate this work and contribute to America’s moonshot goal to halve cancer-related deaths by 2047.
This fall, we're debuting a new public flagship event for our city. We call it Avant South at Georgia Tech, and we’re holding the inaugural two-day summit Sept. 28 – 29. With it, we’re aiming to create an annual convention that will bring the finest minds and voices to Atlanta every autumn to explore and discuss the most consequential issues related to technology facing humanity.
I hope you saw Atlanta native and proud Yellow Jacket Christopher Eubanks stun the tennis world at Wimbledon two weeks ago! Just a few months after cracking the top 100 ranked men’s tennis players, the 27-year-old broke through to the quarterfinals, upsetting two top-ranked seeds along the way. Chris’ unbelievable run at Wimbledon made us all proud and highlighted one of my favorite things about Georgia Tech — that one of the world’s finest research universities also has a rich, storied tradition of athletic excellence.