To boost the state's struggling economy in the midst of the Great Depression, funds were found, and the station was finally established with US$5,000 (equivalent to $90,000 in 2023)[4] in April 1934.

GTRI's research spans a variety of disciplines, including national defense, homeland security, public health, education, mobile and wireless technologies, and economic development.

This group investigated the forty existing engineering experiment stations at universities around the country, and a report was compiled by Harold Bunger, Montgomery Knight, and Vaughan in December 1929.

[7][10] Vaughan was selected as the Engineering Experiment Station's acting director in April 1934 and hired 13 part-time faculty and a few graduate assistants.

[9][12] It was created by the Chancellor of the University System and the president of Georgia Power Company, and the Engineering Experiment Station's director was a member of the council.

[18] Director Vaughan had initially prepared the faculty for fewer incoming contracts as the Georgia General Assembly had cut the station's appropriation by 40%,[15] but increased support from industry and government eventually compensated for lower state funding.

[17][30] Emerson later instituted a policy requiring EES employees wishing to work with Scientific Associates to make a written request to the president of Georgia Tech.

As a result, Rosselot went on leave from his post at Georgia Tech in November 1952, pending the acceptance of his resignation by the chancellor, which became effective March 1, 1953.

Many EES researchers held the rank of professor despite lacking a doctorate (or a comparable qualification for promotion as determined by the Georgia Board of Regents), something that irritated members of the teaching faculty.

Cudd's successor Paul K. Calaway, previously director of the School of Chemistry, made a last-minute request to the contract organization in May 1954 to cover the resulting $20,000 (equivalent to $190,000 in 2023)[4] deficit.

[40][42] Under Boyd's purview, the Engineering Experiment Station gained many electronics-related contracts, to the extent that an Electronics Division was created in 1959; it would focus on radar and communications.

[40] The Frank H. Neely Research Reactor was completed in 1963 and was operational until 1996, when it was defueled due to safety concerns related to the nearby 1996 Summer Olympics events.

[44] Throughout the Cold War era, radar and antenna related applications remained a prominent research activity in EES' contracts with the Defense Department.

[47][48][49] President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative resulted in the largest research contract in Georgia Tech's history in 1985.

[50][24] In 1989, as part of a project with the U.S. Army, and using technology it had been developing since the late 1960s, GTRI completed the largest outdoor compact antenna range at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

[51] On April 10, 1989, GTRI announced that one of its research groups, led by James Mahaffey, had duplicated the results of a controversial University of Utah experiment that had allegedly achieved cold fusion in a jar of water.

[45][52] Four days following the announcement, the researchers discovered that the instrument used to measure neutrons was damaged by the heat of the liquid and gave false, elevated readings.

[53] The station's expanded mission bolstered its traditional research strengths, resulting in work on projects that improved radar operation on the Saturn rocket and in the invention of the compact antenna range by Richard C.

Publicly, Stelson's task was simply to recommend a plan for reorganization, but the administration clearly intended for Georgia Tech and the Engineering Experiment Station to be closely integrated.

[56][59] During his tenure, Stelson reorganized the station into eight semi-autonomous laboratories in order to allow each to develop a specialization and clientele, a model it retains (with slight modifications) to this day.

Most importantly, it allows the university to perform multi-year contracts that are not possible under state law, which requires that money received must be spent in the same fiscal year.

Truly helped GTRI survive a recession and the end of the Cold War despite its dependence on United States Department of Defense (DOD) contracts.

[64][4] One of GTRI's more widely used (and ongoing) products, FalconView, was initially developed in the early 1990s; it is a geographic information system that allows pilots to plot flight paths while integrating real-time military intelligence.

[66] Reedy encouraged funding researchers who had ideas that needed support, and introduced a new cost accounting standard for recovering indirect expenditures.

[69] GTRI and Georgia Tech played host to sitting president George W. Bush in March 2002; a mock disaster was staged during the visit, demonstrating new technologies.

[74] Some recent notable projects have included the Deployable Joint Command and Control System and ULTRA AP, a concept combat vehicle.

[86][87] GTRI personnel are involved in DARPA's Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales project through the Proactive Discovery of Insider Threats Using Graph Analysis and Learning system.

[120] GTRI performs research for clients at the local, regional, national, and international level,[121] and employees are encouraged to publish their work and present it at conferences and consortia.

Most projects are conducted on a cost-reimbursable basis and are negotiated by Georgia Tech's Office of Sponsored Programs with terms and conditions appropriate for contracts specific to the operation of a university research organization.

Since 1995, GTRI (and in particular, its Huntsville Laboratory) has been a University Affiliated Research Center, a designation by the United States Department of Defense intended to maintain what it calls "essential engineering and technology capabilities".