Georgia Tech Research Institute

Georgia Tech Research Institute

Founder	W. Harry Vaughan
Type	Nonprofit[1]
Location	Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Key people	James Hudgens Director, GTRI Chaouki Abdallah Executive VP for Research, Georgia Tech[2] Ángel Cabrera President, Georgia Tech
Revenue	US$640 million (FY 19)
Employees	2,400 (June 2018)
Website	www.gtri.gatech.edu

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is the nonprofit applied research arm of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. GTRI employs around 3,000 people, and was involved in nearly $1 billion in research in 2023 for more than 200 clients in industry and government.^[3]

Initially known as the Engineering Experiment Station, (EES) the organization was proposed in 1929 by W. Harry Vaughan as an analog to the agricultural experiment stations; the Georgia General Assembly passed a law that year creating the organization on paper but did not allocate funds to start it. To boost the state's struggling economy in the midst of the Great Depression, funds were found, and the station was finally established with US$5,000 (equivalent to $90,000 in 2023)^[4] in April 1934.

GTRI's research spans a variety of disciplines, including national defense, homeland security, public health, education, mobile and wireless technologies, and economic development. Major customers for GTRI research include United States Department of Defense agencies, the state of Georgia, non-defense federal agencies, and private industry. Overall, contracts and grants from Department of Defense agencies account for approximately 84% of GTRI's total research funding.^[5] Since it was established, GTRI has expanded its engineering focus to include science, economics, policy, and other areas that leverage GTRI's partnership with Georgia Tech. GTRI researchers are named on 76 active patents and 43 pending patents.^[6]