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Atlanta, GA | Posted: April 19, 2021
Renay San Miguel
Communications Officer II/Science Writer
College of Sciences
404-894-5209
Summary Sentence:
College of Sciences staff and faculty who are leading the Institute's Covid-19 response, a key School of Biological Sciences academic support specialist, and a team of cybersecurity pros are the winners of three Georgia Tech Human Resources awards.
Full Summary:
College of Sciences staff and faculty who are leading the Institute's Covid-19 response, a key School of Biological Sciences academic support specialist, and a team of cybersecurity pros are the winners of new One Small Step, Spirit of Georgia Tech, and One Giant Leap Awards presented by Georgia Tech Human Resources.
Tech Tower at Georgia TechBoth the new One Giant Leap and One Small Step Awards (formerly known as Process Improvement Awards) are designed to honor individuals and/or teams who exhibit the following traits:
The winners of these awards, presented by Georgia Tech Human Resources, easily meet those criteria.
In addition, the Spirit of Georgia Tech Award aims to honor employees who “inspire others with their presence and professionalism, creating an environment where others flourish and thrive.” That, say those who work with her, exactly describes School of Biological Sciences Academic Program Coordinator II Chung Kim, this year’s award winner.
One Giant Leap to fight the pandemic
For the One Giant Leap Award — which identifies those who exhibit those behaviors on an Institute level — the winning team includes College of Sciences' Greg Gibson, Patton Distinguished Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Director of the Center for Integrative Genomics, and member of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience; and Joshua Weitz, Patton Distinguished Professor and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences.
Both Gibson and Weitz have been heavily involved in the Institute’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Gibson helped to set up the process for testing Georgia Tech students, faculty, and staff, and Weitz and an interdisciplinary team created the Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool, an interactive map estimating Covid-19 risk levels for gatherings of different group sizes for every county in the United States and in the UK. Both Weitz and Gibson are on an Institute task force helping to create a safe return to campus in the fall.
The Testing Site Operations team, which shares the 2020 award, includes: Dale Allgood, Alfred Blue, Tokiki Brown, Anton Bryksin, Jenny Cotton, Greg Gibson, Sheree Gibson, Benjamin Holton, Jamison Keller, Brian Liu, True Merrill, Alex Ortiz, Miles Paca, Mike Shannon, Nicholas Speller, Sara Warner, Joshua Weitz, and JulieAnne Williamson.
The Spirit of Georgia Tech = Chung Kim’s support for faculty
Lisa Redding, academic program coordinator II for Bioinformatics and Quantitative Biosciences, School of Biological Sciences, says that in dozens of supporting comments from graduate students and faculty, “Chung was praised for her kindness, professionalism, and positive attitude. She is known for being knowledgeable, helpful, organized, and for following-up to make sure that problems are resolved.”
Redding says students echo those comments; Chung “cares about them as people, not just as students. She is said to exude positivity,” and goes out of her way to make students feel well-supported in their graduate education. They also praise her for taking time to greet them by name when they pass on campus.
One Small Step for secure GT devices
For the One Small Step Award — for a team or individual who exhibits those behaviors on an individual or departmental level — the award goes to a team of College of Sciences Academic and Research Computing Services (ARCS) professionals who came up with a new way for enrolling and managing devices on campus networks.
The following ARCS staffers, along with an Office of Information Technology (OIT) staff member, were honored for their work on the College of Sciences Asset and Endpoint Management Dashboard:
Steven Daniele, Academic & Research IT Senior Support Engineer, ARCS
Justin Filoseta, Director of IT, Research Scientist II, ARCS
Troy W. Hilley, Systems/IT Architect Principal,
Jeffrey S. Lowe, Senior Web Developer, ARCS
Nguyen T. Nguyen, Support Engineer Lead, ARCS
Arian Padron, Lead Support Engineer, ARCS
Michael Sheldon, Application Developer Manager, ARCS
Troy T. West, Information Security Engineer Lead, OIT
“The whole process of verifying inventory, enrolling devices with endpoint management, and signing the loan form, is now a simple and self-service workflow, available via the one-stop-shop of the College of Sciences Asset and Endpoint Management Dashboard,” says Lew Lefton, College of Sciences Assistant Dean for Information Technology and Associate Vice President for Research Computing. “This convenience increased the number of people who were in compliance with policy, and consequently reduced the likelihood of data disclosures and their associated risks.”
