![]() Suddenly traveling from Mumbai to Atlanta was no longer an option.įollowing some advice from his soon-to-be professor and his mother, Samnani started working on engineering solutions that might help his community, and he was inspired by the work he had already been doing. Then, last year, just as Samnani was preparing to start a master’s degree program at Georgia Tech in aerospace engineering, the Covid-19 pandemic struck. He also launched his own robotics startup called Ignite Labs, which develops affordable robotic equipment for industries and promotes robotics to students of all ages. “I built my first robot probably in the eighth grade,” Samnani recalled.Īs a teen, he started building Mars Rover prototypes for NASA competitions. The Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center hosts everything from corporate meetings to wedding receptions.Mirza Samnani estimates that he’s built well over 100 robots. The Biltmore, long an icon in Midtown, was purchased by Georgia Tech in 2016 and converted into apartments, offices and retail spaces. A variety of academic and research buildings have followed, including the country’s oldest technology incubator, an economic development lab which works with municipalities to support business expansion, as well as the $5.3 million Hive Supercomputer supporting countless research projects.īut Tech Square is more than just research buildings and industry giants. In 2001, Tech broke ground on the Scheller College of Business, which remains the area’s cornerstone. A supercomputer and a Waffle HouseĪt the heart of Tech Square is, of course, Georgia Tech, which has grown beyond the leafy confines of its main campus across the interstate. The move merged operations which had previously been split between Atlanta and the company’s former headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia. And in November railroad giant Norfolk Southern opened its new headquarters in Tech Square, a 750,000-square-foot building which will employ more than 3,000 people. ![]() In October, the networking hardware company Cisco opened an office in Tech Square. In 2017, financial technology company NCR moved its global headquarters to Tech Square, bringing 4,000 jobs along with it. Tech Square is now home to more than 200 startups, five startup accelerators, 10 investor offices and innovation centers at which the likes of AT&T, Delta Air Lines, Home Depot, Panasonic and Coca-Cola have used to build valuable partnerships with the school and its students.Īnd some companies have gone a step further than that. Explore Special Section: Atlanta & the Railroadsįrom the beginning, Tech Square was envisioned as a place where the technology industry could benefit from the immense talent base at Georgia Tech, and companies big and small have taken advantage. It’s hard to find any place that’s more densely packed with startups, incubators, corporate innovation centers and students than this little corner of Midtown. The Starbucks in the Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business is an ideal place to sip a latte and people watch, perhaps spotting the next tech billionaire rushing by. Now, Tech Square is an area that absolutely brims with well-known names and smart people. “There were no reasons to go there - no classes, no internships, no cool restaurants, no conferences - and good reasons not to go there.” From startups to corporate headquarters “We rarely ventured into the Midtown neighborhood across the connector,” he wrote in a 2019 blog on the school’s website. What a change from the days when current Georgia Tech president Angel Cabrera attended graduate school at Tech from 1991 to 1995. Academic buildings, offices of tech companies, hotels and apartment complexes, restaurants and other businesses have replaced what was once an expanse of vacant lots. A pedestrian bridge landscaped with grass and shrubbery to soften the highway noise crosses the 14 lanes of interstate traffic that once divided this area of Midtown and hemmed in Georgia Tech’s growth. And suddenly, he had it.Ī quarter-century later, Technology Square - more commonly known as Tech Square - is a bustling, vibrant 13-acre neighborhood populated by students, entrepreneurs and locals alike. Clough had been thinking about a place that could become the heart of Atlanta’s technology community, akin to Kendall Square in Boston. Road closures for the games forced the Georgia Tech president to find a new route to work in the morning, one that took him through a blighted section of Midtown separated from Tech by the Downtown Connector. It was the 1996 Olympics that started the wheels turning in Wayne Clough’s head.
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