Baratunde Cola, Professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Ph.D. Ceremony

Baratunde Cola is a professor in the Woodruff School and the founder and CEO of Carbice Corporation. Carbice originated at a Georgia Tech incubator space in 2011 and, under Cola’s leadership, has become the world’s largest vertically aligned carbon nanotube production center. Using recycled materials, the company creates products to prevent the overheating of electronics, with applications from smartphones to satellites, and improves the efficiency of semiconductor production.

Cola joined the faculty in 2009. In 2017, he received the Alan T. Waterman Award — the nation’s highest honor for early-career scientists and engineers — for his breakthrough creation of the optical rectenna, which turns light into direct current and could potentially double solar cell efficiency at 10% of the cost. He also co-founded the Academic and Research Leadership Network, comprising over 300 engineering researchers from underrepresented minority groups.

Cola earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Vanderbilt University, where he also played football, and a Ph.D. from Purdue University — each in mechanical engineering — before joining Intel Corporation as a test research and development engineer. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers.

Before the coronavirus lockdowns, Matt Majesky didn’t take much notice of the fees that Grubhub and Uber Eats charged him every time they processed an order for his restaurant, Pierogi Mountain.

But once the lockdowns began, the apps became essentially the only source of business for the barroom restaurant he ran with a partner, Charlie Greene, in Columbus, Ohio. That was when the fees to the delivery companies turned into the restaurant’s single largest cost — more than what it paid for food or labor.

Pierogi Mountain’s primary delivery company, Grubhub, took more than 40 percent from the average order, Mr. Majesky’s Grubhub statements show. That flipped his restaurant from almost breaking even to plunging deeply into the red. In late April, Pierogi Mountain shut down.

“You have no choice but to sign up, but there is no negotiating,” Mr. Majesky, who has applied for unemployment, said of the delivery apps. “It almost turns into a hostage situation.”