Georgia Tech Funds 9 New Innovations Ready for Real World

Promising technologies often get stuck between the laboratory and the real world, but Georgia Tech is helping nine faculty members cross that gap with Tech Ready Grants.

The Office of Technology Licensing announced funding for projects spanning medical devices, sustainable packaging, and advanced manufacturing. These aren't far-off concepts but innovations ready for the next critical step toward market launch.

Professor Steve Diggle is engineering protein nanomachines that bacteria naturally use as weapons against each other. His TAILSTRIKE platform repurposes these microscopic tools to create precision antibacterials that target harmful bacteria without the collateral damage of traditional antibiotics, offering hope in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

Assistant Professor Ellen Yi Chen Mazumdar is developing fully 3D-printed electric motors that promise flexible, efficient manufacturing. Meanwhile, Professor Carson Meredith is advancing biodegradable packaging materials that actually work, solving the tough challenge of keeping food fresh while ditching problematic single-use plastics.

Safety innovations are getting attention too. Professor William Singhose created cable-angle sensing technology that detects when crane cables start to tilt, preventing dangerous swings before they cause injuries or damage on construction sites.

In healthcare, Senior Research Engineer Xiaojuan Song is developing a smart wound dressing that monitors healing progress continuously without disturbing chronic wounds like diabetic foot ulcers. Professor Shuichi Takayama is using lab-grown human lung tissue to test drug toxicity, offering a more accurate alternative to traditional animal testing.

Assistant Professor Christos Athanasiou built a platform to test how materials hold up under real-world stress, speeding up validation for high-performance applications. Research Engineer Nathan Meraz is advancing camera-based 3D sensing technology that matches LiDAR quality in a smaller package.

The Ripple Effect

Tech Ready Grants provide the early momentum that promising research needs to become real products. By funding the validation and development phase, Georgia Tech is helping faculty move innovations out of the lab and into industries where they can solve actual problems.

Director of Technology Licensing Mary Albertson emphasized that these projects represent strong potential for real-world impact across multiple sectors. The grants help researchers take critical steps toward commercialization by supporting the work that happens between discovery and deployment.

These nine projects could reshape how we fight infections, package products, build motors, treat wounds, test drugs, and operate heavy machinery safely. Sometimes the gap between breakthrough and real-world change is just one grant away.