A group of former teaching assistants focused on providing better accessibility for women in mechanical engineering has won the College of Engineering’s 2022 Student Innovation Competition – Promoting Equity & Access (SICPEA). Team EPICS’ winning entry focused on the College’s makerspaces. The team and two runners-up, Team Oracle and Team BD9000, were selected based on their creativity, innovation, and commitment to promoting equity and access for marginalized student populations.

SICPEA is hosted by the College’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council. The second-year competition encourages Georgia Tech students to utilize engineering fundamentals to develop creative solutions to challenges in the student community. The goal is to recognize innovations that will promote equity and access, rather than revenue, convenience, or workflow.

Teams were asked to identify a campus problem that has a significant, negative impact, then design an innovative solution to effectively address it. Submissions included a proposal outlining the problem they chose to research and the potential impact of their solution. Many proposals, including the three winners, chose to focus on socially disadvantaged populations at Georgia Tech and the structural barriers making their academic success more difficult. Their proposals aimed to address these issues to improve academic experiences for a multitude of groups.