Two Georgia Tech Teams Win Department of Energy JUMP into STEM Challenge

Two Georgia Tech teams came in first and runner-up in the U.S. Department of Energy’s JUMP into STEM Challenge national competition. The competition allows student teams to compete in developing ideas to increase electrification, reduce energy use and carbon emissions, and develop novel solutions to improve resiliency and sustainability of the built environment. Georgia Tech teams led by Assistant Professor Omar Isaac Asensio have won in at least one category four of the past five years. 

“We’re excited and proud that Georgia Tech teams have continued to successfully compete against top universities nationally in this important competition,” says Omar Isaac Asensio, assistant professor in the School of Public Policy and director of the Data Science & Policy Lab.  

The annual student competition is sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Participation in the JUMP into STEM challenge is integrated in Asensio’s PUBP 3042 Data Science & Policy course. The winning Georgia Tech teams for 2022 – 2023 included students from the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, the College of Computing, and the College of Engineering. 

The first-place team, made up of Yash Gupta, Vibha Narasayya, Daksh Sehgal, and Krishnav Bose, won the sustainability and resiliency category for their project investigating whether rainwater can be harvested to supplement water infrastructure during times of crisis. Due to climate change, crises like these have become more common in the U.S. and are disproportionately affecting minority and low-income communities.  

The group set out to solve the issue using Jackson, Mississippi, a predominately minority and low-income city that is highly affected by water crises, as a case study. They developed a solution using rainwater collection cisterns that are installed in low-income households, along with a public initiative to make the solution accessible to low-income communities. 

A second Georgia Tech team, including Joelle Dlugozima, Ila Sharma, Patrick Young, and Gururaj Deshpande, were runners-up in the electric category for their Solar Savings Web Estimator project. The project focuses on raising awareness for — and reducing informational barriers to incorporation of — rooftop solar panels into low-income housing projects in Atlanta. The team proposed a user-friendly web-based app that allows users to view average savings and tax breaks if they decided to use solar power based on their current energy usage.  

In all, 10 teams from Georgia Tech competed in the competition. 

JUMP into STEM Finalists will be invited to present their solutions during the 2022 – 2023 Final Competition in January 2023 and compete for a paid summer 2023 internship at NREL, ORNL, or PNNL. 

Learn more about JUMP into STEM.