From scientific research and academic excellence to college sports and infrastructure, 2024 has been a breakout year for Tech. President Ángel Cabrera, in an interview with the Technique, discussed the Institute’s success and the road ahead.
“Other presidents before … have done a great job in pushing Georgia Tech forward,” Cabrera said when asked about his contributions to the Institute’s tremendous growth. “I see my role as building on that and keeping these trends going.”
But Cabrera explained that his definition of success is not contingent on Tech’s rankings.
“We are not going to … let this magazine or that newspaper define success for us,” he said. “We defined our success by the impact that we have.”
For his team, success means serving more students, producing more talent, conducting more research and creating more economic impact. Nevertheless, the rise in the Institute’s rankings is a welcome by-product. Forbes called it the second-best Public Ivy college. All of Tech’s engineering undergraduate programs ranked in the top five of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings, and they ranked Tech as No. 2 in Most Innovative Schools.
Cabrera believes that Tech has the potential to catalyze the same economic value on Atlanta that universities had in Boston, Pennsylvania, and Silicon Valley. The Institute generated over $5 billion in statewide economic impact for fiscal year 2023.
“No big hub of innovation and entrepreneurship [emerges] without a top research university,” Cabrera said.
And much of this is propelled by programs involving students. Since its inception, CREATE-X has launched more than 650 student-led startups whose total valuation exceeds $2.4 billion.
Y-Combinator, one of the most influential and prestigious startup accelerators, funded 12 Jackets founders in its latest cohort, with Tech second only to Stanford. And five of Atlanta’s private startups valued at over $1 billion — OneTrust, Flock Safety, Greenlight, FullStory, and Stord — are founded by Tech alums.
While Georgia Tech is known for its STEM programs, Cabrera emphasized the importance of expanding disciplines like public policy, economics, ethics and humanities to develop well-rounded leaders.
He explained that questions of how to improve the human condition often lie outside of technology. “We’re not going to give up on our focus on technology, but to deliver on that mission, we need strong history and psychology, we need strong public policy, we need strong economics, we need strong ethics and philosophies, we need all those elements. So, our plan is to grow all those elements and bring them on par with our engineering, our more traditional subjects, without giving up what makes Georgia Tech very unique and distinct.”
Cabrera also shared Tech’s global dreams: “We are a proud state school of Georgia … [and] a part of how we serve our state is by being a global hub.”
The Institute has over 90 exchange programs, and 52% of Jackets have some sort of international exposure. Cabrera is also proud of Tech’s presence in Panama and France. Further, the Institute is exploring opportunities in countries like South Korea and India.
The Institute is also making significant inroads in its infrastructure.
Phase three of Tech Square, set to be completed in 2026, will be the new home of the Scheller College of Business graduate and executive education programs and the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Once completed, Science Square will be a hub for life science innovation in West Midtown.
Bobby Dodd Stadium is currently under construction to accommodate the Thomas A. Fanning Student-Athlete Performance Center. This center will be used for athlete strength and conditioning, sports medicine, student-athlete nutrition, and meeting spaces for Tech football.
Cabrera also explained that the vision for future campus construction is to maintain a walkable and bikeable core with nodes at the periphery for transport and parking. The development of EcoCommons and the conversion of Peters Parking Deck into a park will increase the forest cover on campus. Moreover, the new student dorms on the west campus will spread the density of students across the campus.
2024 was an impressive year for GT Football. With a record of 7-6, the team finished its first consecutive winning season since 2013-2014. They defeated FSU in Ireland and almost defeated University of Georgia in their backyard. Cabrera referred to the weekend of the University of Miami game, where the fourth-ranked visitor bit the dust at Bobby Dodd, a moment everyone will remember for the rest of their lives.
Tech sports have had a significant part in spreading the Institute’s name. Cabrera called GT Athletics a form of “marketing.”
The average viewership of the UMiami game was 3.5 million, and the Georgia game peaked with more than 11 million people tuning in and an average of 8.5 million viewers.
Cabrera shared another economic impact of Tech Sports: bringing alumni and donors together. Ernest Scheller, Jr., and Bill George — two large donors — fly into Atlanta regularly to watch the football games with Cabrera.
But football is not the only sport that made Tech proud. Nine Yellow Jackets represented five countries in Volleyball, Basketball, Swimming and Tennis at the Paris Olympics.
Other successes include awarding over 12,000 undergraduate, graduate and online degrees, surpassing Georgia State to have the highest statewide enrollment, and making Tech more affordable for in-state, out-of-state and international students.
This past year was a landmark year for the Institute, and one more step towards developing, as Tech’s mission statement says, “leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.”