You have been a faculty member with the Georgia Tech School of ECE for 19 years. To what do you attribute your longevity there?
What is special about Georgia Tech in general, and ECE in particular, is how hungry we are. We are a high-energy program and you can tell that people on campus are genuinely trying to make this a better and more impactful place by working together. It is a lot of fun to be part of something like that and it is this energy that has kept me here. ECE at Georgia Tech is a place where it is possible to do big things with real impact. I sometimes describe us as being a “blue collar Ivory Tower”. Sure, we are world-class scholars and researchers. But, we try to make sure that what we do matters well beyond the campus boundary. And I resonate very much with this ambition – hence my longevity at Georgia Tech.
You became the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair in the School of ECE in August 2018. How have your first two years in this role been?
Challenging, fun, humbling, and not entirely what I expected. Being school chair in ECE at Georgia Tech is a remarkably meaningful job, where it is possible to have impact at scale. Our rather unique combination of size (over 110 faculty members) and quality (all programs are highly ranked) do create some special challenges and opportunities. The challenges pretty much all have to do with size. We are spread across 11 buildings and it is sometimes hard to create a strong sense of community. But, at the same time, this allows us to cover virtually all areas of electrical and computer engineering and be a bit daring in what we pursue since we have the size to absorb quite a few nontraditional aspects into our enterprise. As such, I have organized my time around the three pillars: People (hire the best, most diverse faculty and staff, and actively recruit the most passionate and talented students), Culture (once they are here, give them the tools, resources, and support they need to be successful), and Reaching Out (make sure we tell our story to all of our stakeholders and partners). We have already made significant progress along all of those dimensions.
At the same time, the current pandemic certainly has changed the landscape quite significantly. And I would be lying if I didn’t say that at times it has been heartbreaking, frustrating, and tiring. But, I am determined that we take this sour pandemic lemon and make lemonade with it, meaning that we should not just focus on short-term fixes to the current challenges. Instead, let’s create new and better ways in which we educate our students, conduct our research, and contribute to the communities around us, so that we emerge stronger rather than weaker once we’re passed this highly unfortunate situation.
Tell us about your area of research. How did you come to focus on systems and controls, specifically swarm robotics?
My research has always had two sides to it. One side has focused on developing new computational and mathematical tools for making dynamical systems do useful and interesting things, which is where language of control theory comes into play. The other side is much more practical and I always like to ground my more abstract, mathematical constructs in real problems. And robotics has served as an endless source of fun and challenging problems throughout my career. I have additionally been mesmerized by the beautiful geometric shapes encountered in nature – such as flocking birds or schooling fish – so my interest in swarm robotics is almost grounded in esthetics rather than in practical considerations.
Your undergraduate degree is in philosophy. Did your undergraduate studies inform your later education and career choices at all?
I believe my undergraduate degree has had real impact on my choices later on. In my research, I always try to go for the fundamental problems. Rather than producing a niche solution to a targeted application domain, I am always looking for broad and widely applicable principles. But more than that, as a philosophy student, I thought that a lot of questions really should have empirical rather than philosophical answers. Is it possible to create a machine that is conscious? Maybe. Why not try to build one? (I probably wasn’t a very good philosophy student.) Ultimately, I approach problems like an engineer and not like a philosopher. But it took me a while to get to that realization.
You recently joined the ECEDHA Board of Directors as secretary. Why did you want to take on this role?
As a school chair you make tons of decisions every day – some small and some large. And, without help, you very quickly drown in the day-to-day activities and lose track of the big, forward-looking questions. I quickly found that ECEDHA was a place with lots of smart and generous people who I could reach out to for support and who also called on me to get my take on things. This strong sense of comradery and a shared sense of purpose is what made me want to join the Board of Directors, since that would give me an opportunity to contribute more directly to an organization that is actively trying to enhance, diversify, and improve the scope and reach of our field. As such, I am humbled and excited to serve on the ECEDHA Board of Directors.
What are your dreams for the future of electrical and computer engineering?
Electrical and computer engineering as a discipline is in a state of flux right now. We are seeing new technical questions in areas such as machine learning, robotics, quantum computing, and bio and nanodevices becoming core to the discipline. At the same time, ECE is playing an increasingly large role in the many defining questions of our time. How do you feed a growing planet? How do you deliver personalized medicine? How do you monitor and combat the effect of climate change? How do you structure the future of work? Well, electrical and computer engineering plays an important part in answering those questions. But, for that, we need to think bigger about who we are and how we educate our students. I hope that we will fully embrace these challenges and I view ECEDHA as the perfect platform to be able to help steer this conversation, as no single university will be able to provide all the answers.
When you aren’t busy being school chair or researching swarm robotics, where will we find you? (hobbies, spare time, etc.)
Being the school chair in one of the largest ECE programs in the Nation is indeed more than a full-time job. Despite that, I do manage to find some time away from the office. I play competitive soccer, I enjoy hiking in the North Georgia Mountains, and I have two teenage daughters who are highly talented aerialists – think Cirque du Soleil – so I am spending quite a bit of time being a circus dad.