Moving Innovation Beyond the Walls

New Leader: Tim Denning, president and CEO of the Georgia Research Alliance; photo Ben Rollins.

If you think of research as something that happens in an ivory tower in Athens (or Augusta, or on Atlanta’s North Avenue or in its downtown, or…well, you get the idea), then you’re right. Georgia’s research universities – Augusta University; Emory University, Georgia Tech and Georgia State University in Atlanta; and the University of Georgia in Athens – are home to scholars, engineers and scientists who pursue the kinds of breakthroughs that win awards and generate papers in prestigious journals. And it’s not just those five institutions, either. Research that promotes discoveries in everything from healthcare to technology and aerospace happens across the state at institutions of higher learning.

But there’s more to it than that. Tim Denning, the new president and CEO of the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), talks about “innovation that can traverse beyond the walls of the university into the business community and help grow businesses, contribute to workforce development and economic development – and most importantly, lead to real-world impact that can benefit the citizens of the state and well beyond.”

In other words, research coming out of Georgia’s schools could change the world.

The GRA, whose mission is to help schools conduct more research and to grow more companies that develop and use that research, partners with the five universities previously mentioned, along with three others: Clark Atlanta University, Mercer University and Morehouse School of Medicine. Since its founding in 1991, GRA has leveraged $702 million invested from state dollars to attract $13.2 billion in research grants, venture capital, matching funds and other forms of capital.

If you want to know what that actually looks like, cast your eyes on the Absolics facility in Covington, where this subsidiary of Korean conglomerate SKC will produce a groundbreaking glass substrate (a thin layer of glass) that increases the number of semiconductor chips that can be packed into an electronic device. That makes the chip sets more energy efficient to manufacture. Eventually, the plant will create more than 400 jobs. The research that led to the breakthrough came out of Georgia Tech. In fact, an investment made by GRA is partly responsible.

Impressive Tenure: Susan Shows, former president and CEO of the Georgia Research Alliance, retired in November after 22 years at the organization; photo Daemon Baizan.

In 1993, GRA helped recruit Rao Tummala, who holds a doctorate in ceramic engineering, to Georgia Tech. Tummala is renowned globally for his expertise in the packaging of chips into smaller and smaller devices, and he was one of the first GRA Eminent Scholars, who have endowed chairs funded in part by GRA. Tummala immediately applied for and won a prestigious National Science Foundation grant to establish the first NSF Research Center at Georgia Tech (a much-coveted occurrence in academic circles).

Over the years, the center, now called the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center, has brought in a quarter-billion dollars in research funding and led to the creation of seven startup companies. It also became the center of the universe for research using glass substrate for semiconductor chips. And one of the members of the research team at the center was Sung Jin Kim, then a research professor at Tech and now SKC’s director of new business development. “That plant wouldn’t be in Georgia if the discovery hadn’t been made by an Eminent Scholar at Georgia Tech,” says Susan Shows, Denning’s predecessor who retired November 1 after 22 years at GRA.

Centers of Scientists

The long-term investment that led to Absolics’ new plant also highlights another way that research at Georgia universities can be leveraged to increase both investment and economic development when researchers cluster together in centers.

Tech’s Packaging Research Center has been in existence for decades, as has the Emory Vaccine Center, where researchers helped test the COVID vaccines. In 1995, GRA helped recruit Rafi Ahmed, one of the world’s leading immunologists, who founded the center in 1996. It is the largest academic vaccine development center in the world and has brought in more than $2 billion in outside investment.

Medical Pioneers: Klaus Ley and Catherine “Lynn” Hedrick, co-directors of the Immunology Center of Georgia at Augusta University, with Qingkang Lyu, Ph.D. working behind them; photo Hillary Kay.

At Augusta University’s Medical College of Georgia, the Immunology Center of Georgia (IMMCG) is just getting off the ground. Co-directors Klaus Ley and his wife, Catherine “Lynn” Hedrick, were recruited in 2022 from the La Jolla Institute of Immunology to launch the IMMCG. Ley is one of the world’s premier researchers in vascular immunology, which focuses on the role the immune system plays in heart disease. Specifically, Ley says, he studies how the autoimmune response – which happens when the body mistakenly attacks healthy cells and tissues instead of invading bacteria or viruses – is involved in atherosclerosis (thickening or hardening of the arteries, caused by plaque building up in the artery wall).

“I’m interested in the autoimmune component because I’m convinced that makes the disease worse,” he says. “If someone has a heart attack, the likelihood of having a second heart attack is quite high, even in a short amount of time. So the disease kind of feeds on itself, and part of that is this autoimmune response … I’m mostly interested in how the autoimmune response works, what triggers it, what makes it worse, which cells are involved.” One of his goals is to develop a “tolerogenic” vaccine, which helps suppress that autoimmune response, and he is the co-founder of a startup company, Atherovax, which is testing vaccine formulations.

He and Hedrick (whose research focuses on cancer and the immune system) are also busy building the center. They have recruited six other researchers and plan to bring on 20 in total. “What brought us here is a unique opportunity to build something of national importance,” he says. “That’s not an offer you get every day.”

Dennis Kyle, who heads UGA’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases (CTEGD), says what brought him to Athens from Florida in 2017 was the university’s parasitology program, one of the best in the world. CTEGD’s mission is to “tackle global diseases of poverty,” which means a focus on parasites and the diseases they cause, from malaria to Chagas disease to the infection caused by the “brain-eating” amoeba (Naegleria fowleri). The center takes an interdisciplinary approach, with researchers from nine different departments in five schools at UGA. “We currently have 25 different investigators all working on these really important pathogens of humans and animals,” says Kyle, who is one of the world’s top experts on malaria.

Kyle’s lab is investigating potential drugs to treat malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax, a parasite that can stay in the liver for years and cause symptoms to come back again and again. It’s the most common cause of malaria outside of sub-Saharan Africa, and existing treatments have fairly significant side effects. Kyle’s team was the first to identify and test new drug compounds to target this parasite in liver cells in the lab, and he says they have some potential drug candidates that look promising.

Malalria Expert: Dennis Kyle, director of UGA’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases; photo Daemon Baizan.

He’s also trying to identify drugs to treat the infection caused by the brain-eating amoeba, which is very rare but almost always fatal. It lives in warm water and infects people when they go swimming and get water in their nose. (Swallowing water won’t cause infection.) This past July, a Georgia teen died 11 days after swimming in a lake and being infected with the amoeba.

The infection is hard to diagnose, and the disease moves quickly. “We’ve identified a biomarker – something the amoeba secretes into the body – and we can measure that in different body fluids,” Kyle says. Usually, he says, it takes doctors a while to rule out other illnesses (like meningitis) – and by that time it’s too late. “So potentially we could have an early diagnostic [test], which would be really important because it’s such an acute fatal disease,” he says.

“Many times, we fix things, but we never get to see the finished product. Here, we made the correction in plastic first to make sure everything worked as we thought it would, so they got to do all that work with 3D printers.” Jim Hundley, senior director for engineering and programs, Mercer Engineering Research Center

Engineering Solutions

Engineers and scientists at the Mercer Engineering Research Center (MERC) in Warner Robins pride themselves on finding real-world solutions through their research. Rather than compete for grants, they take on clients via contracts.

Problem Solving: Karli Young, a staff mechanical engineer at MERC, uses the FaroArm® to laser scan a piston bar, which is part of a military bomb rack; photo Mercer University.

“With contracts, you have a specific period of performance with a statement of work that identifies the requirements you must meet,” says Andi Mitchell, executive director of MERC. The center is a nonprofit arm of Mercer University and had its genesis in 1987, following the establishment of the school of engineering a few years earlier. MERC, too, is interdisciplinary – Mitchell calls it a one-stop shop with almost every discipline of engineering under its roof – and students work alongside engineers to investigate and solve problems for clients.

Like their neighbor at Robins Air Force Base, for example. The B-2 stealth bomber needed some improvements to its bomb rack unit, which carries, monitors and releases bombs. So the U.S. Air Force called on MERC, which had done previous work on the B-2. In a year’s time, MERC’s engineers and researchers did a design review and stress analysis and tested materials and components for a new shear pin and rear frame brace, working in its 113,000-square-foot facility just 5.5 miles from Robins AFB.

Like many of MERC’s projects, some reverse engineering was required. “Figuring out how to take it apart and figure out what is wrong is the first challenge,” says Jim Hundley, senior director for engineering and programs at MERC. “We had one of our Ph.D. mechanical engineers leading [the project] and … some junior staff working with this Ph.D., and it was a great mentoring aspect. Many times, we fix things, but we never get to see the finished product. Here, we made the correction in plastic first to make sure everything worked as we thought it would, so they got to do all that work with 3D printers.”

Hundley also notes that MERC brought the project in under budget, which allowed the team to do some additional efficiency modifications in equipment used for testing the bomb rack.

Real-world Project: Noah Wolfert is an aerospace engineer at MERC; photo Mercer University.

A mentoring aspect is baked into MERC’s DNA from its founding – or even before. Mitchell, who has been with MERC since a few months after it launched, says that the school had its genesis when Maj. Gen. Cornelius Nugteren, the commander at Robins in the ’80s, approached Mercer’s president, R. Kirby Godsey, at a Macon Chamber of Commerce meeting and shared his concerns about a shortage of engineers. “Godsey said, ‘If you want an engineering school, you’ve got an engineering school,’” Mitchell says. Now, at MERC, Mitchell notes that student engineers get hands-on experience working with faculty on real-world projects.

Hands-on experience is something Tim Denning brings to his new job as head of GRA. Denning is the first Ph.D. (microbiology and immunology) to lead the organization and the first to have run his own lab (at Georgia State) as a researcher himself. As a postdoctoral researcher, he worked at the La Jolla Institute and at Emory’s Vaccine Center. His own research deals with mucosal immunology, or “the immune system of the intestines,” he says. He’s primarily studied Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, and he says he’s experienced the benefits of GRA since coming to Georgia around 20 years ago.

And while he says it’s an interesting transition to step away from his lab and university (work will continue there), he thinks his unique experience will help further the mission of GRA to drive economic development by transforming research into entrepreneurship.

After all, that’s the ultimate goal of all the investigation, experimentation and problem-solving that happens on Georgia’s campuses: propelling research into innovation in the real world.