Georgia Tech students ran away with this year’s National Security Agency Codebreaker Challenge, a competition that tests the country’s best cybersecurity students. Out of 448 colleges and universities, Georgia Tech finished first for the third year in a row. Even better, our friends at the University of North Georgia finished right behind us in second place, making this the fifth consecutive year that one of our schools has earned the top prize!

Georgia Tech is one of America’s top research universities and No. 1 among those without a medical school. This distinction is about far more than bragging rights. Rather, it is a measure of our impact in addressing some of the world’s most consequential challenges and of our central role in driving competitiveness and innovation in our state.

One of the greatest privileges of my job is getting to celebrate with our graduates and their families at Commencement, and I took immense encouragement this past weekend, when we sent off more than 6,300 future leaders.

Earlier this month, I had the great pleasure of speaking at the investiture of our friend, Mike Shannon, as president of the University of North Georgia (UNG) in beautiful Dahlonega. Mike is a two-time alumnus (M.S. HP 2003, Ph.D. NRE 2009), a nuclear engineer, and a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Army. [...] Mike is a rare breed, and it’s no wonder the Board of Regents tapped him to be UNG’s president. However, Mike is just the latest Yellow Jacket to accept a leadership position in academia or public service in Georgia.

Georgia Tech researchers are creating new diagnostics, treatments, and devices to help us fight our worst diseases, including cancer. Three recent grants from the newly established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) will help us accelerate this work and contribute to America’s moonshot goal to halve cancer-related deaths by 2047.