Jonathan Colton is professor of mechanical engineering, industrial design, and international affairs.

His research and teaching interests are at the intersections of global/international development and design, and manufacturing. He is a strong advocate of multidisciplinary hands-on design experiences. He directs Georgia Tech's U.S. Department of State’s Diplomacy Lab.

Colton was a member of the World Health Organization’s Immunization Practices Advisory Committee and served on the Board of Directors of the Global Soap Project. He was a U.S. Department of State Jefferson Science Fellow at the USAID Bureau for Food Security where he supported the scaling up of agricultural technologies in the Feed the Future program, the U.S. government’s $1.1 billion per year response to global poverty and malnutrition. He also led an international team that designed a Net-Zero Energy Warehouse for Drugs and Vaccines for the government of Tunisia.

Colton’s composites research studies the design and fabrication of the next generation of aircraft with emphasis on continuous fiber reinforced materials and the conversion of post-industrial use materials for high performance transportation usage. His humanitarian design and engineering research is focused on agricultural mechanization in sub-Saharan Africa, including developing in-country capabilities for fabrication, service, and maintenance to improve local economies.