Woodruff School Graduates Honored with 2025 CoE Alumni Awards
March 18, 2025
Four graduates from the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering were among those honored at the College of Engineering’s 2025 Alumni Awards Induction Ceremony held on March 8. The College annually celebrates alumni who have contributed to the profession, advanced in their careers, and enhanced the lives of others both personally and professionally.
Honorees are nominated by committees within each of the College’s eight schools and formally submitted for selection.
Emily Woods joined the College’s Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni based on her early achievements. Lindsey Thornhill entered the College’s Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni for his significant and distinguished contributions as a senior leader in the field.
The awards ceremony culminated in the induction of eight new members of the College of Engineering Hall of Fame, including James R. Borders, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Novare Group, and Carl D. Ring, retired chairman and CEO of Ring Container Technologies, LLC.
Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni Award
The Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni Award recognizes alumni who have distinguished themselves through professional practice and service to the Institute, the engineering profession, or society at large. They are on the fast track and have made rapid advancement within their organizations. Already, they have been recognized for early achievements by others within their profession, field, or organization.
Emily Woods
ME 2010
COO and Cofounder, Sanivation
Through her Georgia Tech experiences with GTRI, work abroad, and Engineers Without Borders, Woods found a passion for human waste management in underserved areas. She went on to earn a master’s from the University of California, Berkeley, in renewable energy focused on the reuse of human waste. She cofounded Sanivation, a social enterprise that provides sanitation solutions for cities in East Africa. Sanivation partners with local governments to improve the dignity, health, and environment of rapidly urbanizing secondary cities.
Woods holds two U.S. patents for fecal waste treatment and transformation to solid fuel. Her experience includes waste management projects in Kenya across the sanitation value chain, from containment to emptying, transport, treatment, and reuse. Her expertise is at the intersection of technology, business models, stakeholder relations, policy, and operations. She is a Forbes “30 under 30” honoree and was among the Georgia Tech Alumni Association’s first class of “40 Under 40” recipients. She is proud to have made Kenya her home for over 12 years.
Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award
The Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award recognizes alumni who have provided distinguished contributions to the Institute, profession, field, or society at large. Candidates are highly placed executives and are actively involved in engineering, management, industry, academia, or government.
Lindsey Thornhill
B.S. ME 1984, M.S ME 1986, Ph.D. ME 1996
Executive Vice President and Board Director, Integrated Solutions for Systems (IS4S)
Thornhill joined IS4S in 2015, where he has been engaged in new business development efforts and managing a team of scientists and engineers to develop and demonstrate novel prototype technology for the Department of Defense. Before joining IS4S, Lindsey managed the Advanced Concepts Division at Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC). At both, he has led teams to capture and successfully execute technology development programs that advanced technology across diverse applications, including air-delivered weapon systems, chemical and biological agent defeat, autonomous robotic systems, hybrid power systems, and algal biofuel systems.
Thornhill received the Sigma Xi Research Award for his M.S. thesis in the Woodruff School. He was also awarded SAIC’s Physics Publication of the Year for a paper based on his dissertation, which appeared in the Cambridge Journal of Plasma Physics. Lindsey served on the Woodruff School External Advisory Board as a member and chair. He has also served on the Board of Visitors at the University of Georgia.
Engineering Hall of Fame
Membership in the Engineering Hall of Fame is reserved for individuals holding an engineering degree or honorary degree from Georgia Tech. Those selected have made meritorious engineering or managerial contributions during their careers.
James R. Borders
ME 1983
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Novare Group
Borders began his career in the Gulf of Mexico as a systems engineer for Gearhart Industries after working offshore for Placid Oil Company all four of his summers at Georgia Tech. He then returned to Georgia, where he earned his JD/MBA from the University of Georgia, practiced law at King & Spalding, and was a turnaround manager at GrandWest.
In 1992, he founded Novare Group. The company’s early developments were the adaptive reuse of several Atlanta buildings, including Peachtree Lofts and the historic Biltmore Hotel. In 2002, Novare Group delivered its first high-rise development, Metropolis, which has been credited with sparking the residential demand that helped transform Midtown Atlanta into today’s vibrant neighborhood. The company has developed over 20,000 multifamily units in 64 communities. Eighteen buildings have been SkyHouse® communities, a rapid-build, efficient high-rise program Borders concepted and Novare executed 2011-16.
Borders has received lifetime achievement awards from the Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors, Georgia State’s Robinson College of Business, the Urban Land Institute, and the Atlanta Business Chronicle. He is a member of the Hill Society and a recipient of the Petit Distinguished Service Award. He is currently vice chairman of the Georgia Tech Foundation and lives in Atlanta with his wife, Sarah. They have two daughters, Savannah and Maggie.
Carl D. Ring
ME 1978
Retired Chairman and CEO, Ring Container Technologies, LLC
After graduating and spending two years with DuPont, Ring joined his father’s company, Ring Can Corp., in Oakland, Tennessee. His challenge was to build the company’s first plastics plant to supplement its metal can product offering. This first plant used machinery designed and built in-house and soon sold out. As machinery advanced significantly, Ring went on to build 20 highly automated clean-room factories across the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain to supply many of the world’s leading food producers. The company was renamed Ring Container Technologies, LLC (RCT) in 2000 and remains one of the nation’s largest and most respected manufacturers of plastic food containers.
Over 37 years, Ring served as engineer, president, CEO, and chairman. In 2017, RCT was acquired by MSD Partners. MSD continues to grow RCT and has maintained its culture where people are valued, respected, and encouraged to have fun.
Ring and his wife, Trish, have four grown children and reside in Memphis, Atlanta, and their ranch in Cashiers, North Carolina, where he is still designing and building machinery
About the Alumni Awards
The College of Engineering Alumni Awards were created in 1994 under the leadership of John A. White during his tenure as dean. He passed the torch to Jean-Lou Chameau, former Georgia Tech provost and engineering dean, whose outstanding service to the College led him to receive the 2006 Dean’s Appreciation Award from then-Dean Don P. Giddens, a Tech engineering alumnus. For the next six years, the program would fall under the guidance of Dean Gary S. May, who received his B.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech. In 2017, Steven W. McLaughlin was appointed dean and served until 2020, when he was named the Institute’s provost. The Awards are now under the leadership of Dean Raheem A. Beyah, a native Atlantan who earned his Georgia Tech master’s and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering.