Twin brothers and Tech alumni Travis (M.S. ME ‘09) and Troy Nunnally (M.S. ECE ‘09, Ph.D. ECE ‘14) develop cutting-edge technologies for businesses, all while continuing to serve Atlanta’s Black tech ecosystem that helped them succeed. Travis spoke with the Technique about how their company, Brain Rain Solutions, grew from a startup idea at the Institute into a consulting firm that has impacted over 8,000 businesses. Since graduating, he and Troy have established deep ties between the College of Engineering (COE) and the local community, developing the talents of engineers of minority backgrounds.
The idea for Brain Rain Solutions arose from a project the pair worked on at Tech when they noticed that the symposium at which the projects were presented lacked the software to organize and present the projects. They saw a hole in the market — they could streamline companies’ operations by integrating them with the newest available technologies.
“We started the company as a software development agency, so we essentially partner up with small, medium and large-sized enterprise companies to help launch and release products. In 2009, Apple just launched the App Store, and the big strategic objective during those years [was] focusing on iPhone apps. We did that for years, and then in 2014, we started to focus more on augmented reality and virtual reality applications. Then, in 2017, we started to focus more on artificial intelligence (AI) applications,” Nunnally said.
Travis and Troy are known in the local community as the “Tech Twins” for a reason — with Travis’s engineering expertise and Troy’s expertise in AI and cybersecurity, they have constantly adapted to remain at the forefront of emerging technology. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, only 6% of U.S. businesses employed AI in some form, but Brain Rain Solutions was already developing ways to implement it in the private sector. Now, Troy says they plan to capitalize on the newest application of AI that is just beginning to grow more prevalent — fully-equipped AI agents.
“The way businesses have been [applying AI] over the past couple of years has been [of a] very narrow scope. For example, it may be a chatbot just for customer support. … We think there is going to be a move to link these narrow applications to achieve a more holistic, complex deliverable or even process. … We think the focus that a lot of companies are moving towards is AI as a process instead of AI as just a narrow deliverable. AI agents are really the big push right now for companies who are ahead of the game, and they have these AI agent swarms (a team of agents) working on complex processes. That’s essentially what we’re currently working on. At our business, we try to stay two to five years ahead of what the current industry is. That way … as customers start to think about it, we’ve already been working in that industry and have the expertise and experience to execute,” Nunnally said.
As a master’s student in Mechanical Engineering, Nunnally developed a broad technical foundation that equipped him to navigate this emerging field, and the problem-solving skills that he learned helped him navigate the obstacles of entrepreneurship that he may not have explicitly faced in class.
“As Mechanical Engineers, the courses we take cover the entire spectrum of engineering,” Nunnally said. “When you start a business, and you’re an engineer, you quickly realize that you can be the best talent in the world, have the best problem solving and build the best product, but if nobody knows about that product, it will die. I just had to learn that if you want to survive in a field of entrepreneurship, [marketing is] a prerequisite. At this core essence, it’s asking how to get somebody to purchase a product, and that’s the problem. As engineers, now we reverse engineer how to solve that problem. It’s really an engineering problem at its core — you’re experimenting.”
According to Nunnally, the twins also graduated from the Institute with profound relationships with their peers and the Black tech community in Atlanta, and he attributes his decision to matriculate here to programs that help develop talented engineers from underrepresented minority backgrounds. A couple of alumni he maintains a close relationship with are Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens (ChemE ‘98), a Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brother, and Nashlie Sephus (M.S. ECE. ’10, Ph.D. ECE ’14), an AI Scientist and Evangelist at Amazon Web Services with whom they founded their nonprofit KITTLabs.
“To be transparent and honest, [Troy and I] would not have gone to Tech if we didn’t have some of these resources. I was born and raised in Southwest Atlanta. … When I was making my decisions of where to go to graduate school, it was based off of a fellowship called the GEM Fellowship Program, which was focused on getting minority students into graduate schools at top-tier universities. My choices were MIT, Stanford and [the Institute]. Because I’m Atlanta-born and raised, I decided to come home to Georgia Tech. … I’m a first-generation grad student, so I probably would not have had the resources to [get my degree] without turning a lot of debt,” said Nunnally.
Now, the pair, along with Sephus and other alumni, give back to the local community through KITTLabs. There, they work to develop the talents of people of color in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) by providing a community with resources that can be difficult to find in a white male-dominated field.
“We’ve been instrumental in linking Georgia Tech with the Black Tech ecosystem, as well as building startups and engineers and tech talent in that ecosystem as well. With KITTLabs, we’ve partnered with quite a bit of organizations in Atlanta, like Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, to help build talent in Atlanta. [KITTLabs] is near and dear to our hearts, but it’s very instrumental to keep our ties, especially in this day and age, to the Black tech ecosystem so we can at least keep it thriving and alive,” Nunnally said.
Nunnally’s work at Brain Rain Solutions and KITTLabs embodies what it means to be a Jacket in engineering — he is innovative, adaptive and committed to serving his community.