yale capstone project

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• Master of Environmental Management — MEM

MEM Capstone Courses and Guidance

Learn more about the MEM capstone requirement and courses.

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A highlight and requirement of the MEM curriculum is one designated capstone course, or one independent capstone project with a faculty advisor, during the second year of study.* All MEM capstone courses can be found below, and additional information about the MEM capstone experience can be found in the MEM Capstone Guidance section .

*Part-time students can complete the requirement any time after completing the equivalent of one full year of study; joint degree students can complete the requirement during, or any time after, their final two matriculated YSE semesters; MEM-5 students can complete the requirement in either semester.

Note that a capstone course used to fulfill the MEM capstone requirement cannot also be used toward fulfilling an MEM specialization requirement; a capstone course taken once cannot be used to fulfill multiple requirements. The MF capstone cannot be used to fulfill the MEM capstone requirement and vice versa.   For specific capstone questions, please email  [email protected] .

MEM Capstone Course Listings

• ENV 951   Strategic Environmental Communication (Anthony Leiserowitz)
• ENV 953 Sustainable Business Capstone Consulting Clinic (Peter Boyd)
• ENV 954 Management Plans for Protected Areas (Mark Ashton)
• ENV 956   Strategies for Land Conservation  (Brady Gentry)
• ENV 957 Field Skills in Land Stewardship (Mark Ashton)
• ENV 959 Clinic in Environmental/Climate Justice, Sustainability, and Public Health (Laura Bozzi
• ENV 960 Urban Climate Solutions Capstone: New Haven Clinic (Karen Seto)
• ENV 962 Tribal Resources and Sovereignty-Clinic (Patrick Gonzalez-Rodgers)
• ENV 963   Case Studies in Water Management: Conflict and Cooperation (Shimon Anisfeld)
• ENV 966   Sustainability Implementation: Change Management in Institutional Settings (Sara Smiley Smith, Lindsay Crum)
• ENV 970 Environmental Protection Clinic Policy and Advocacy (Douglas Kysar)
• ENV 971 Land Use Clinic (Jessica Bacher)
• ENV 972   Advanced Environmental Protection Clinic (Follows Law School Calendar) (Doug Kysar)
• ENV 974   Social Innovation Starter  (Teresa Chahine)
• ENV 975   Western Lands and Communities Field Clinic: Research to Practice (Justin Farrell)
• ENV 979 Capstone: Deep Decarbonization by Sub-national Actors (Rob Klee)
• ENV 982   Green Engineering and Sustainability (Julie Zimmerman)
• ENV 985 Capstone: Neighborhood Planning Workshop (David Kooris)
• ENV 990 Climate, Animals, Food, and Environment Law & Policy Lab ("CAFE Lab") (Doug Kysar)
• ENV 991 Advanced Climate, Animals, Food, and Environment Law and Policy Lab (Doug Kysar)
• GLBL 6300,  Sustainability Transitions: Principles and Practice in India  (Jessica Seddon)
• MGT 529 Global Social Entrepreneurship  (Fall) (Tony Sheldon)
• MGT 826   Inclusive Economic Development Lab: Opportunity Zones in New Haven  (Kate Cooney) 
• MGT 865 Global Social Entrepreneurship  (Spring) (Tony Sheldon)
• MGT 955 Urban Resilience: Cities in a Post-Covid19 World: From Crisis & Recovery (Murali Chandrashekaran)

Goals of the MEM Capstone Experience

A requirement of the MEM curriculum is one designated capstone course, or one independent capstone project with a faculty advisor. Capstone courses are intended to offer MEM students a culminating professional experience by engaging them in projects that connect their prior coursework with real-world efforts to understand and improve the management of environmental resources.

While a wide range of projects may qualify, some examples include efforts to address climate change, water scarcity, energy access, pollution burdens, habitat conservation, urban resilience, sustainable production and many others. The capstone should be a minimum of three credits and allow for the integration of different experiences into a single representation of a student’s work, helping to set up the transition to a professional career.

Students can take any capstone course at any point during their time at YSE, although the MEM capstone requirement can only be fulfilled during the second year of study. (Part-time students can complete the requirement any time after completing the equivalent of one full year of study; joint degree students can complete the requirement during, or any time after, their final two matriculated YSE semesters; MEM-5 students can complete the requirement in either semester.)

Guiding Principles for MEM Capstones

Designated MEM capstone courses and independent capstone projects should seek to:

• Focus on real-world problems or opportunities of the types students are likely to encounter in their professional careers;
• Incorporate interdisciplinary perspectives as appropriate for effective environmental management;
• Challenge students to make judgments in the face of uncertainty;
• Provide opportunities to work with clients in a clinic-based format;
• Encourage participation of students from any MEM specialization;
• Require a group or individual deliverable that represents the culmination of work over the course of the project, following the development of an initial project work plan.

Applying Guiding Principles

Courses that may qualify as capstones will be reviewed against the principles above by the Senior Associate Dean for Professional Practice and recommended to the Master’s Program Committee (MPC) for comment and approval by vote. Independent projects that may qualify as capstones should be reviewed against the criteria above by the advisor of record, who will also make the determination of whether the project will count as a capstone prior to official enrollment.

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Education Studies

Senior capstone project (yc version).

During their senior year, Education Studies Scholars complete a year-long capstone project which enables them to conduct in-depth original research or develop an educational innovation. This is an opportunity for scholars to take what they have learned from the program, and decide how they want to make a contribution in the broader education field.

Scholar projects have included original quantitative and qualitative research, policy proposals f or community organizations, children’s books and young adult novels, musicals co-written with New Haven high school students, photo essays, short  films and more.  As Scholars prepare to graduate, they present at  the Capstone Colloquium to fellow Scholars, faculty, mentors, community members, family and friends.   

The opinions and statements included in the projects below are the individual opinions and statements of Education Studies Scholars. They are not endorsed by Yale, and they are not official university positions or statements.

Social Context of Education

Nora Faverzani (2023) ,  Learning Dance: Reflections on the Relationships Between Intensive Dance Training and General Education for Pre-Professional Dance Students

Christian Robles (2023) ,  Closing School Climate Gaps at Elm City Montessori School

Akio Tamura-Ho (2023), Zoom Affects: Discipline, Dislocation, and Digital Surveillance During COVID-19 Remote Learning 

Jennifer Tegegne (2023),   The Chicago Youth Movements Oral History Project: Documenting Abolitionist Youth Resistance

Ajay Culhane-Husain (2022), Financial Education Best Practices for (Student) Athletes in  Wake of Name, Image, and Likeness Legislation

Arya Singh (2022), ‘Making it work’ to leave home?: Students in wheelchairs’ experiences and decision making regarding the residential college experience

Durel Crosby Sankofa (2022), Hungry for More: Why Recognizing the Lunchroom as an  Educational Space is Imperative for U.S. Public Schools

Phoebe Liu (2022), Sense or censorship: press freedom, high school journalism  programs and democratic education

Rahshemah Wise (2022), What are our Schools Teaching?: A Narrative Analysis of  Long Term Punitive Discipline and Mental Health

Sam Ryan (2022), Disparities in Autism Diagnoses: The Role of Physicians,  Schools, and Families

Thuy Pham (2022), English Learning Language in Vietnam: The Role of English in the Course of Foreign Turmoil, Globalization, and National Policy

Ava Niknahad (2021),   School Health: Analysis of Collaboration between the Medical and Educational Fields

Josh Diaz (2021),   How Gender Formation Can Inform Best Practices for Combating Toxic Masculinity

Rayshawn Johnson (2021),   The Histories, Presents, and Futures of a Black Education in the City of Philadelphia: A Story and a Dream

Sydney Terroso (2021),  The Disabling Effects of Society: Approaching the Education of Autistic Students through a Social Model of Disability

Carrie Mannino (2020),   Your Feelings, Your Family, and You: Forced Separation Trauma and Accessible Media Interventions for Children Aged 3-5

Chase Warren (2020), Subjugation Schooling on Standing Rock: Education, History, and Theories for Change

Donya Fegan (2020), Teaching Beings: Epistemicide and the Maintenance of Settler Colonialism in the Classroom

Jane Buckley (2020), Reimagining Consent Education in the United States:The Potential of a Children’s Book in Helping to Dismantle Rape Culture

Miriam Cohen (2020), “Interesting:” The Limits of Education for Social Change

Odette Wang (2020),    Invisible No Longer: Elevating Asian American Youth Voices in the New York City School Diversity Debate

Sidney Saint-Hilaire (2020), Misdiagnosis: Race-Conscious Approaches to Medical Education

Susannah Beyl  (2020),  Questioning the Rule: The Civic Implications of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) as a Pedagogy of Power

Sara Harris (2019),  ‘At the Center of Everything:’ Understanding Rural Brain Drain Through the Perspectives of Educators

Colin Hill (2019),  ‘Tread softly, because you tread on our dreams’: Parental advocacy in suburban school district restructuring

Tran Le (2019),  The Post- Janus v. AFSCME  World for Teachers’ Unions

Christian Rice (2018),   Bridging the Social Gap: Recommendations for Building Bridging Social Capital in Schools

Fiona Riebeling (2018),   From Concept to Classroom: Theoretical and Practical Approaches and Gaps to Multicultural Education in Chile

Veena Advani (2018), User Research in Online Education: The Challenges of Accurately Understanding Student Needs in a Global Classroom

Ana Barros (2018), Psychedelic Tongues: Storytelling and Unearthing the English Language Learner

Lucas Riccardi (2017),  Attitudes Towards School Choice of Parents of LGBTQ Students

Israel Tovar (2017),  Critical Race Education: Ethnic Studies as a Payment to the National Education Debt

Cindy Xue (2017) in collaboration with All our Kin,  Caring 24/7: The Paradox of Nonstandard Work Schedules and Child Care (In)access in the Post-Welfare Reform Era

Cathy Zhu (2017),  Evaluation of the Jones-Zimmerman Academic Mentoring Program (JZAMP)

Abigail Cobb (2016),  A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Academic Performance

Erin Cofrancesco (2016),  How to Get to Sesame Street: The Origins and Impact of Children’s Educational Television

Corinne Kentor (2016),  Using Your Outside Voice: A Case Study Exploring the Politics of Bilingual School Leadership in Southern New Mexico

Marisol Dahl (2015) ,  Early Literacy and the Publishing Industry

Educational Policy & Politics

Stephen Carrabino (2023), Community organization in opposition to anti-LGBTQ policies implemented by public school administrations and school boards in Bucks County, Pennsylvania

Matt Post (2022), Reform On and From the Inside: Bureaucratic Mobilization  in School District Central Offices

Samuel Grob (2021),  Just for Fun? The Politics of Representation and Critical Education in High School Musical Theater

Sasha Lee (2021),  Thinking Beyond Traditional Schooling: A Historical Case Study of Alternative Sites of Education”

Leila Murphy (2019),  ‘Anti-Israel, and even Anti-American:’ The Politics of Teaching about Israel in American Schools

Markus Reneau (2019),  Planned Failure: The Business and Politics Behind New Orleans Public Schools

Jaclyn Price (2019),  Building a Brighter Future for Florida Pre-K: Recommendations for a more effective universal preschool program in the Sunshine State

William Roberts (2019),  Understanding the Impact of School Finance Reforms: Where the Research Falls Short

Edgar Avina (2018),   Using Guidance Counselors to Increase Enrollment of Houston High School Seniors in Postsecondary Vocational Programs

Caitlin Dermody (2018),   For the Profession and For Ourselves

Sophie Paci (2016),  Outside the Walls: Exploring the Benefits of Outdoor-Based Learning for Children’s Development

Diana Rosen (2016),  Elm City Montessori: A Public Montessori Option for New Haven

Higher Education and Yale

Janice Dean (2023), Students’ Perceptions of Mattering in the Classroom

Eamon Goucher (2022), Students as Neighbors: Exploring Yale University Students’ Feelings of Connectedness with New Haven Community Members

Juliana Viola (2022), Understanding Yale Undergraduates’ Decisions to Enroll  vs. Take a Leave of Absence During the 2020-2021 School Year

Laura Nicholas (2022), “It’s our life project”: Uncovering the motivations and  social entrepreneurial spirit of Yale alumni school founders

Joy Qiu (2020),    Inductive Learning and Writing Proofs: Student Experiences in Advanced University Mathematics

Sarah Mele (2020), Beyond Inclusion: An In-Depth Analysis of Teaching of Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, and Adrienne Rich

Franklin Eccher (2019),  Breaking the ‘Golden Cage’: Increasing College Access for Low-Income High-Achieving Rural Students Through the Selective College Admissions Process

Ben Wong (2019),  Humanizing the ‘Nameless, Faceless Yellow Horde’: Chinese American Attitudes toward Affirmative Action

Laura Leon (2018),   Higher Education Access for Undocumented Students in Connecticut

Jose López (2018),  Not Made for ‘FGLIs’: Social Capital, Cultural Capital, and the First-Generation Low-Income Experience at Yale University

Shannon Flores (2018),   Approaches to Discussing Controversial Issues in Higher Education

Mariano Miranda (2018),   Latin American Students in the US: A Case Study of the Costa Rica and Why Does It Matter?

Kate O’Brien (2017),  Yale Athletes in the New Haven Community: Learning from the Past in Building to the Future

Jessica Liang (2017),  American Sign Language: Why It Has Become a Fallback Foreign Language Credit

Teaching & Teacher Education

Sélah Reid (2023), Navigating the Pandemic: The Experiences and Perceptions of Preschool Teachers and Directors Working During Covid-19

Maddie Whoriskey (2023), Advice from Early Childhood Educators: How to Speak with Parents about Discipline

Becca Rose (2022), How to Not Lose Your Mind When Reading Goodnight Moon for  the Thirtieth Time: An Investigation into Shared Storybook Reading  and Caregiver Emotional Intelligence

Edie Abraham-Macht (2022), The Critical Race Theory Debates Through History and  Through Teachers’ Eyes

Mikah Covelli (2022), Trauma-Informed Education for d/Deaf and Hard of  Hearing Children: Supporting Students Who Need It Most

Natalie Troy (2022), Teaching difficult history in middle school classrooms

Jessica Kong (2021),  Inroads and Isolation: How Asian American Educators Work Toward Collective Liberation with Their Students and School Communities

Michael Martinez (2021),  Disciple & Scandals: How the no-excuses disciplinary model of a No-Excuses High School created a toxic school culture and enabled disciplinary scandals

Emil Friedman (2020), Effective Principals, Effective Turnarounds: Considering the Role of the “Turnaround Principal” in Public School Transformation

Alexa  Vaghenas (2020), Effectively Teaching for Self-Efficacy: Empowering Students through Mastery Learning, Trauma-Informed Teaching, and Anti-Racist Education

Jack Lattimore (2020), A Critique of Value-Added Modeling: A Mixed Methods Approach

Diana Woodward (2019),  Teacher Perceptions of Mindfulness Implementation in Public Schools

Wayne Zhang (2018),   ‘Model Minority’ Classrooms: Arguments for and Strategies to Recruit and Retain Asian American Teachers in the Context of the Racial Achievement Gap

Tanner Allread (2016),  The Current and Future Teacher Shortage: Teacher Recruitment and Retention Policy for Oklahoma’s Rural Schools

Proposal for an Education Innovation

Victor Torres (2022), Folklórico Pedagogy: Empowering Youth through Embodied & Counter-Hegemonic Practices of Danza Folklórica

Tahj Lakey (2021),   40 Acres and a School: Engaging Reparative Hybridity in Education Reform

Lana Apple (2020), “I am not a guinea pig”: An Analysis of Parental Advocacy in the German Detracking Movement

Max Solotar (2020), An Interdisciplinary Examination of U.S. Child Care and Suggested Federal Intervention

Nadia Balderas (2020), An Education of our Own: Designing a Latinx School for San Antonio, Texas”

Imani Butler (2020), Black Dreams Matter: An Experiment in Educational Possibilities

Annie Chen (2019) ,  Choosing a Challenge: Building a Choice-Adaptive Points System for a Digital Game

Nathaly Basto Camargo (2017) , ​ Proposing an Intergenerational Interaction Space

Gabrielle Fong (2016),   Warrior-Scholars at Yale: the process of seeking Yale credit for a Naval Science course

Daniel Rubins (2016),  ‘The Central Nervous System of Their Character’: Teaching Extramusical Skills Through Choral Singing

Curriculum Design & Curriculum Analysis

McKenna Christmas (2023), Facilitating Classroom Re-entry for Syrian Children of Refugee Status in Lebanon: Combatting Armed-Conflict Trauma with Resilience-Focused Psychosocial Education Interventions in a Country of Immediate Refuge

Saket Malhotra (2023),   Exploring Approaches to Anti-Racist STEM Education

Katherine Matsukawa (2023),   A Japanese American Curriculum for Connecticut Schools: Teaching Hard History With Narrative, Empathy, and Inquiry

Alexandra Contomichalos (2022), Promoting Healing of Syrian Refugee Children Enrolled in American Schools: Guidelines for a Supplemental Trauma-Informed Program

Grace Kim (2022), Culturally Sustaining Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Frameworks and Approaches

Christian Milian (2021),   Teaching Ta í no: A n Interrogation of Puerto Rican Indigenous Education

Edward Maza (2018),   Visualizing the Invisible: Empowering Students Through Hidden Narratives in the Museum

Natalie Rose Schwartz (2017),  Scaffolding Critical, Multicultural Literacy in the Early Childhood Classroom

Pablo Uribe (2017),  Common Ground: Current Practices Toward a Transformative Social Justice Education; Lessons from Critical Pedagogy and Strategies for the Future

Liza Rodler (2017),  Sex Education in New Haven: Putting the City in the Context of a Century-Long Debate

Daniel Rietze (2016),  ‘Oliver Button is a Sissy’: Integrating LGBTQ Literature into the Middle School English Language Arts Curriculum

Adriana Rodriguez (2016),  Ethnicity & Me: Teaching Racial Tolerance in Early Childhood Education

Kelsey Annu-Essuman (2016),  Hope Village Human Rights Curriculum                    

Mollie Korewa (2016),  Teaching Anti-Racism to Upper Elementary School Students

Kaylyn Williams (2015),  Culturally Responsive Early Childhood Education

Laura Brink (2015) ,  5th Grade Technology Curriculum

Reilly Foote (2015) ,  Physical Education in Elementary Education

Avery Jones (2015) ,  8th Grade English Curriculum

Dominic Lounds (2015) ,   ‘My Stinky Little Brother Doesn’t Like to Read’: A Venture in Children’s Literature

Creative Project

Eda Uzunlar (2023), Learning Together Worlds Apart: On the Education of Students of Immigrant Backgrounds in Remote Pockets of the United States of America

Melia Young (2023),   Hawaiian Names and the People Who Carry Them: An Exploration of Diasporic Hawaiians Navigating Yale University

Peyton Aiken (2023),   Not a phase, but a fact: Reimagining queer girlhood in middle grade fiction

Blanca Tallaj (2022), Self-Narrations as Survival for Queer Latinx People

Simone Koch Costa (2022), @why.schooled Questioning High School Practices and Purpose via Instagram

Courtney Nunley (2021),  Dreaming Black Environmental Futures: A Middle Grade Graphic Novel on Black Communities’ Relationship to the Environment  (graphic novel)

Jared Michaud (2019),  Theatre of the Oppressed in Rural Education: An Applied Theatre Activity Teaching Social Empathy in Isolated, Homogenous Communities  (theatre)

Emma Hathaway (2017),  ‘The Things We Fight For’: Insider Reflections on the Next Great High School Musical (music)

Liliana Santos (2017),  Bodies in a Classroom Space  (photography)

Fortney Stark (2017),  ‘Caitlin’s Big Idea’: Creating A New Social-Emotional Learning Video Series for Preschoolers (film)

Abdul-Razak Zachariah (2017),  ‘Their Own Set of Wings’: Themes of Representation in Multicultural Children’s Literature  (creative writing)

Victoria Campbell (2015),  “Write like a Ninja: My Foray Into Creating a Young Adult Novel” (creative writing)

Education Theses by other Yale Seniors

Julia Butts , Sociology, 2017, Probing the Pattern of Asian American Underrepresentation in Special Education:  Educator Perceptions of Students and Parents

Shoshana Davidoff-Gore , American Studies, 2017, Assessing School Choice as a Mechanism for Ethnic, Racial, and Socioeconomic Integration in New Haven Public Schools

Layla Treuhaft-Ali , History, 2017, ‘The Rich Implications of Everyday Things’: The Jeanes Teachers and Jim Crow, 1908–1968

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Yale Young Global Scholars

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Yale Young Global Scholars emphasizes an open, exploratory, and collaborative approach to learning. Our program is designed to allow students to experience learning in a variety of different university contexts, from large lectures to small seminars, and even the spontaneous learning that happens outside the classroom in conversations with one another.

• With no grades or course credit , YYGS encourages students to approach all aspects of the program creatively with the understanding that they set their own limits. Students receive an electronic certificate of completion at the end of the session.
• The diverse and inclusive community at YYGS enhances learning by inviting students to analyze issues from multiple perspectives. Living and learning alongside peers from around the world allows students to broaden their own world views by learning about countries and cultures they have never encountered before.
• Explore Yale by living on campus and taking advantage of opportunities that the Yale community offers.

The curriculum ties together all YYGS sessions and is the foundation of the academic program. Students work with a different group of peers and learning contexts, which allows for a wide range of peer-to-peer interaction. These learning contexts include:

Jackson seniors make an impact on global health through capstone project

This fall, Global Affairs seniors in the Jackson Institute have been working with NGOs and organizations across the world to apply their knowledge from Yale to solving global problems.

One capstone group has been making an impact on international health through a partnership with UNICEF. Yale College seniors Phil Abraham, Sofia Braunstein, Eric Duan, Nikolaj Hoejer, Kyle Ranieri, Lauren Sapienza, Grace Shu, Matthew Stock, and Andrew Weiss worked with UNICEF’s Supply Division to advise on pandemic response — analyzing vaccine supply strategies, strengthening local healthcare systems, and learning from past and present UN program leaders.

Under the direction of Jackson Institute faculty member Robert Hecht, these Global Affairs students have researched vaccine supply management and the creation of sustainable health infrastructure in the developing world. The capstone group also interviewed leaders in the field of global health to refine the students’ ideas and hear from professionals about the future of the field.

At the end of the semester, students delivered a report to UNICEF outlining their suggestions on vaccines and public health management. Jackson undergraduates see the capstone as a critical part of the major. “Being able to spend a semester working alongside peers to present strategic recommendations to an organization like UNICEF is an opportunity unique to Jackson and one of which I’m grateful to be a part,” said Shu.

UNICEF is one of six capstone clients that Jackson undergraduates worked with this fall. “One of the biggest draws for me personally when selecting the Global Affairs major was the senior capstone,” said Shu. “The process has been incredibly collaborative, and our brainstorming sessions with our advisor in particular have yielded some of the most fruitful discussion I’ve had during a class at Yale,” Shu added.

The UNICEF group members say they have enjoyed and learned from the capstone experience. “Whether through interviews with former UN agency heads or through client meetings at the UNICEF headquarters, this project has been intellectually engaging and tangibly impactful,” said Ranieri.

Members of the UNICEF capstone will get to see their ideas change the way that international NGOs source and supply vaccines — as well as the benefits of how UNICEF works beyond the scope of their project. “It’s been great learning about UNICEF’s commitment to sustainable development of low and middle-income countries’ local capacity with respect to strengthening healthcare systems … On a broader scale, it has been eye-opening to see how complex global health is from the international perspective down to the vaccine development pipeline,” Duan said.

The capstone students see their work as an opportunity that lasts beyond their time at Yale. “I’ve also learned hard skills of data analysis and soft skills of client relations — these will surely carry over to my career after graduation and beyond,” Ranieri added. 

The client, Gian Gandhi, Chief of UNICEF Supply Division’s Markets, Supplier Financing and Innovation Centre, reflected on his partnership with the Yale students:

“The students approached the project with an adeptness I would expect of professional consultants for hire, providing an inception report to structure their work, a face to face mid-project readout, and an end of project presentation. They set up their team with clear roles and responsibilities, and set up mini-teams that tackled a variety of aspects of the issue in parallel. This enabled them to cover a lot of ground, and yet dig deeply into complex issues. As a client to the Capstone students, we were grateful for their hands-on engagement, their rigor, the way they structured the work, as well as their timely, and clear communications throughout the project. Also, of note, the students gained access to an impressive array of senior actors in the field of global health whose opinions and input UNICEF values. They also drew upon the limited but often technically nuanced grey and published literature to inform their advice. The students also listened to the input UNICEF provided along the way, and modified their thinking and approach to continually focus their efforts to meet our evolving needs.”

“In terms of the nature and substance of their work, they explored the issues in-depth, to the point that it felt like we were talking with peers that had worked in the arena of vaccine development and delivery for years, and understood the nuances and complexities associated with the various institutional mandates of key agencies in the field. The resultant report they have provided is of a high standard—and one that we have shared across the relevant team members across several HQ Divisions at UNICEF. Many of their recommendations align with emerging thinking within UNICEF, and as such, have served to validate the approaches we are starting to consider. Other recommendations that the students provided have offered UNICEF new ideas that are ambitious and inventive. A sign of the quality of their work is that UNICEF has requested that the Capstone students present again their final findings and recommendations to a larger audience of UNICEF staff in the new year (2018) to discuss how UNICEF might be able to adopt and adapt to some of the students proposals.”

Learn more about this year’s capstone projects

Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library

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Physician Assistant Online Program: Brainstorming and refining capstone topics

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• Brainstorming and refining capstone topics
• Writing the research question and searching the literature
• Helpful tools, links, and Yale services

About this page

This section will walk you through exercises to develop a research topic and get a sense of the availability of literature on that topic. If you prefer to watch a recording, these concepts were covered in the November 2022 librarian live session .

At this stage of your project, you are executing  scoping searches.  

Scoping searches help you: 

get an idea of how much literature there is on a topic

find prominent authors and papers in the field

identify gaps in the current scholarly conversation

refine your research question

This is in contrast to  comprehensive  or  systematic searching , which you will conduct once your topic is finalized.

Brainstorming exercise

• Mind mapping exercise This tool from the University of Arizona Libraries will allow you to take an initial nugget of an idea and brainstorm potential directions you could explore for a capstone project. It will also help you develop some search terms to take into the various databases.

From term list to search strategy

Join synonyms together with ORs and major concepts together with ANDs. If you have three main ideas in your research topic, a search strategy could look like this:  (concept A or A synonym or A acronym) AND (concept B or B synonym or B acronym) AND (concept C) . It's important to include a variety of terms since authors refer to similar ideas by different names - you don't want to miss the perfect paper because somebody called it CBT and you wrote out "cognitive behavioral therapy"! 

• Example: (cannabinoid OR cannabis) AND (epilepsy OR seizure)
• Example: (THC OR tetrahydrocannabinol) AND (CBD or cannabidiol) AND (epilepsy OR seizure)

Scoping searches in two databases

No one database holds the entirety of the biomedical literature. While PubMed is a great tool, it only holds about 5,000 journals. Meanwhile, Scopus has ~30k across a range of disciplines. The size of both tools have different affordances: PubMed's limited scope means each article is tagged with subject headings, study design, population characteristics, and more that make finding extremely relevant papers possible quickly; meanwhile, Scopus's broad content facilitates tracking citations, allowing you to track the development of the scholarly conversation of a topic over time. 

• PubMed 1. Paste your multi-concept search into the bar on the home page. 2. Using the lefthand sidebar, try looking at the publication trends over time on your topic, filter by study design (RCT for example), or filter for specific age groups. 3. Make note of relevant or interesting-looking papers. Open them in new tabs, or paste citation information and links into a Word document. 4. Try different combinations of filters and collect additional search terms from the titles, abstracts, and keywords section of relevant articles.
• Scopus 1. Paste each concept into its own row on the Scopus home page, adding additional rows using the + button. Combine rows with AND. 2. Sort your results by most recent to see where the conversation on the topic currently stands; by highly cited to acquaint yourself with talked-about papers (sometimes seminal and important, sometimes controversial - citations ≠ quality); and by relevance for a Google-like search experience. 3. Look at the lefthand sidebar and see frequent authors on the topic and journals that publish in the space. 4. On papers that sound relevant, browse through their bibliographies and see who has cited them since they were published. 5. Add additional search concepts if you want fewer results, remove search concepts if you want more results. 6. Note interesting papers throughout! 7. Repeat.

Refine and reflect

Work through these questions to refine your research topic and reflect on your work:

• How did your initial topic change over the course of brainstorming search terms and conducting scoping searches? 
• What is your topic of interest now? 
• How many relevant papers did you find today? How many are clinical trials, compared to opinion pieces or conference presentations? 
• Is there still an active conversation around your topic in the literature? Or did publishing drop off 5+ years ago? 
• Does your topic seem like a viable capstone topic? 
• If not, how could you broaden the scope to find good evidence, or narrow the scope to make results sets more manageable? 

Testing the viability of your topic worksheet

• Capstone topic development exercises This worksheet is another version of the exercises above, with places to type your findings.
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The Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences

Energy studies.

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The following links contain information about the curriculum and enrollment:

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

• SAVE THE DATE: Energy Studies Spring Reception is scheduled for Tuesday, April 16, from 4.30 to 6pm at the Carbon Containment Lab (87 Audubun St).
• Office hours for Energy Studies for the Spring Term are Wednesday, 4 to 5.30p, in KGL 119 , or by appointment (email michael.oristaglio@yale.edu ).
• April 23, 12.30 to 6p, Gravel Pit Solar , East Windsor, Connecticut. When completed later this year, Gravel Pit Solar will become New England’s largest solar facility with 120 MW of capacity. The field trip will leave by bus from KGL.
• April 29, 4p, to April 30, 7p, Yale Record Hill Wind Farm , Roxbury, Maine. The trip will leave by SUV van late afternoon on Monday of Reading Period, arriving near Roxbury ca 9.30p, to overnight at a local hotel; the tour of the wind farm, a spectacular setting on a ridgetop in western Maine, will take place the next morning, with the trip returning to KGL ca 7p.
• Students interested in attending should email michael.oristaglio@yale.edu no later than 5p on Friday, 4/12. Limited spaces will be filled in order of response.
• ENRG 300 and ENRG 400 are now populated on Yale Course Search for the 2024-25 Academic Year. As a required course for the Energy Studies certificate, ENRG 300 will be offered in both the Fall and Spring terms, allowing more schedule flexibility to students declared for the certificate. (The ENRG 300 requirement can be substituted by an equivalent high-level seminar, by email request to the Energy Studies DUS, currently michael.oristaglio@yale.edu .)
• A list of Spring Term 2024 courses satisfying Energy Studies requirements can be downloaded HERE . The list is not exhaustive, as many courses can qualify under the provisional rule (see PROVISIONAL AND SUMMER COURSES under Requirements ). Assignment of a course in this list to one (or more) tracks of the program is based on the course’s main content but is flexible and can be changed based on a student’s submitted coursework. An updated list for the 2024-25 Academic Year will be published when Course Search is more complete for the new year.
• Energy Studies graduated 30 Yale Energy Scholars with the Class of 2023 in Commencement ceremonies on May 22. (Two more from the original Energy Studies Class of 2023 will graduate in the Fall.)  The group earned 40 B.A. or B.S. degrees in 16 different majors, including a combined B.S./M.S. degree. Several received academic awards in their majors.
• A PDF slide show celebrating the achievements of Yale Energy Scholars in the Class of 2023 can be found HERE .
• A team of Energy Studies students led by the Class of 2023 won second place overall in the first Hydropower Collegiate Competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.  The competition challenges teams of students from U.S. colleges and universities to re-imagine the future of hydropower with a case study of a local hydropower plant. The Yale team chose to analyze the Rocky River Pumped Storage Hydropower plant in New Milford, Connecticut, which opened in 1927 as the first PSH plant to be built in the U.S. The Yale team also won first place in the Creating Connections competition, involving outreach and education about renewable energy in local communities.
• Energy Studies was approved as a new Interdisciplinary Certificate program by the Yale College Faculty at its meeting on February 2, 2023.
• Submitting an application to enroll in the program is no longer required. Students can declare their candidacy to complete the Energy Studies Interdisiplinary Certificate by filling out a form on the Registrar’s Office website ( HERE ). Completing the form will register a student in Energy Studies with Yale College, generate an email to the program director, and put Energy Studies into the student’s Degree Audit.
• The course requirments for the Energy Studies certificate remain unchanged: Six courses from an approved list, with two courses in each of the three tracks of Energy Studies (see Requirements for more details).
• A capstone project is no longer required, but students still have the option of completing an energy-related project in the Energy Studies senior seminar, ENRG 400.
• More than 50 students from the Class of 2025 have enrolled in the Energy Studies Interdisciplinary Certificate.

• Energy Studies brochure for the 2023-24 Academic Year is HERE .
• Yale Energy Studies Student and Alumni group on LinkedIn is HERE .
• Two Energy Studies seminars, ENRG 300 (F23), Multidisciplinary Topics in World Energy, and ENRG 400 (Sp24), Senior Capstone Seminar, will be offered in the 2023-24 Academic Year.  ENRG 300 examines a series of international, regional, and local topics related to the world’s energy transition. ENRG 400 is a convenient vehicle for seniors to do an optional capstone project in a credited Yale College Course. The seminar also features guest lectures from energy and climate experts around the world. Both courses can be found on Yale Course Search.
• For students interested in an early start on post-graduate internships and fellowships , US Department of Energy announced a new program last spring called Clean Energy Innovator Fellowship , which funds recent graduates and energy professionals to work with critical energy organizations to advance clean energy solutions.
• A new upper level course, ENRG 320/MENG 320/ENVE 320 , Energy, Engines, and Climate, was added to the ENRG classification in 2021 in collaboration with Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science and will continue to be offered in the 2023-24 Academic Year.  Consult Yale Course Search for further information.
• Energy Studies graduated 33 Yale Energy Scholars in the Class of 2022 . A slideshow highlighting their work is HERE .
• Energy Studies graduated 21 Yale Energy Scholars in the Class of 2021 . A slideshow highlighting their work is  HERE .
• Energy Studies graduated 41 Yale Energy Scholars in the Class of 2020 , the program’s largest cohort. The group set high marks for the number of degrees awarded (46, counting double majors), the number of different departmental majors (19), and the number of Energy Studies courses taken (nearly 400). Energy Studies scholars in the Class of 2020 received 11 Academic Prizes at Commencement. 
• The World Economic Forum website (weforum.org) features an updated version of the Climate Change Transformation Map , curated in partnership with Yale through Energy Studies. A team of Energy Studies scholars assembled the information and wrote the text for the map with help from Yale faculty and staff. The WEF website has more than 100 transformation maps on critical topics for the 21st century. 
• The faculty advisory committee for Energy Studies for the 2023-24 Academic Year is: Gary Brudvig (Chemistry; Energy Sciences Institute), Amber Garrard (Office of Sustainability), Michael Fotos (Political Science; DUS, Environmental Studies), Ken Gillingham (F&ES, Economics, School of Management), Cary Krosinsky (School of Management), Julia Nojeim (Clean Energy Coordinator, CBEY), Michael Oristaglio (EPS; director, Energy Studies), Julie Paquette (Director of Energy Management), Daniel Prober (Applied Physics, DUS), Paul Sabin (History), Mary-Louise Timmermans (EPS). All are available for consultation and advice about the program. 

Anna Albright (Environmental Studies), Tyranny of The Isms: How Environmentalism is Appropriated to Block Decarbonization of America’s Electrical Grid

Nikola Bakoc (Engineering Science-Mechanical; Engineering Science-Electrical), The Criticism of Nordhaus’s Social Cost of Carbon

Michelle Barsukov (Engineering Science-Chemical; Economics), Technical Costing Configuration of Water Treatment System

Riis (William John) Card (Mechanical Engineering; Film and Media Studies), Small-Scale Production of Hydrogen Using Bulk Metallic Glasses

Tilden Chao (Economics), A Roadmap for Lifecycle Refrigerant Management at Yale University

Mary Chen (Political Science), Evaluating the Risk of Oil Spills in the Arctic Region of Alaska

Noah Friedlander (Global Affairs), Housing Constraints and Household Energy Consumption in the United States

• Liam Galloway (Environmental Studies), The Locational Suitability of In-Stream Hydrokinetic Turbines: A Regional Assessment
• Saachi Grewal (Applied Physics), Designing Plasma Electrochemical Methods for Enhanced N 2 and CO 2 Conversion
• Alexandra Griffith (Environmental Engineering), Evaluating Methane Emissions and Mitigation Strategies on Small- and Mid-Sized Dairy Farms
• Iszac Henig (Earth & Planetary Sciences), Emily’s Electric Adventure: Crafting a Kid’s Book About Electrification and Climate Change
• Caitlin Henry (Economics), Sustainable Livestock Farming
• Brianna Jefferson (Environmental Studies), The Future of Urban Agriculture and Hydroponics to Address Environmental Justice Issues
• Katerina Kargioti (Applied Physics), Regional Analysis of Excess Power Available in 11 Selected Locations across the United States
• Emma Levin (Applied Mathematics), Harnessing a Hurricane’s Energy in a Warming Climate
• Evan Lipton (Engineering Science-Mechanical; Statistics and Data Science), Nuclear Fusion: The Potential Silver Bullet to Our Climate Issue
• Charlie Loitman (Engineering Science-Mechanical; Economics), Changing the Way the World Is Built: Rebar Placement in 3D Printing of Concrete
• Anya Lomsadze (Statistics and Data Science), Optimizing Demand Energy Response (DER): An Internship at the Company Voltus
• Neal Ma (Physics (Intensive)), Optimality of Thermal Energy Storage for Nuclear Power
• Eliza Poggi (Earth & Planetary Sciences), Reduce, Reuse, Reprocess: An Overview of Medical Device Reprocessing and Potential for Future Analysis
• Abdoulie Sarr (Economics; Engineering Science-Chemical), The Marginal Impact of the African Development Bank’s Energy Supply and Infrastructure Funding on Electricity Access
• Naomi Shimberg (Ethics, Politics, and Economics), Intragenerational Equity in the Social Cost of Carbon
• Wyatt Sluga (Engineering Science-Mechanical), Creating Sustainable Buildings: An Internship at Arup
• Katrina Starbird (Earth & Planetary Sciences), Rocky River in 95% Renewable Future: Case Study Analysis for the Hydropower Collegiate Competition
• Shayaan Subzwari (Physics (intensive)), Rocky River in 95% Renewable Future: Case Study Analysis for the Hydropower Collegiate Competition
• Alex Surratt (Engineering Science-Mechanical; Economics), A Summer in Renewable Energy Development: Where Is It Going? What Comes Next?
• Samuel Thompson (Economics), Marine Dolphin Enterprises and Hydrogen’s Potential in Aviation
• Aimee Titche (Environmental Engineering), Enhanced Weathering as a Negative Emissions Technology for Application in Wastewater Treatment Plants
• Gavrielle Welbel (Engineering Science-Mechanical; Earth & Planetary Sciences), Thermal analysis of the Solar Enclosure for Water Reuse Water Disinfection System
• Patrick Yang (Economics), To Ski or Not to Ski: The Present and Future of Ski Resort Emissions

ENERGY STUDIES

Energy Studies is an Interdisciplinary Certificate program in Yale College. The curriculum is designed to provide enrolled undergraduates with the knowledge and skills needed for advanced studies, leadership, and success in energy-related fields. Energy Studies scholars must also complete the requirements of a Yale College major, since Yale does not offer a major in Energy Studies. 

Study of the world of energy takes many forms.  Think about your home. Where does  the energy come from to turn on the lights and to charge your mobile phone , or t o heat the space and cool it when needed? Answers to these questions involve the science & technology of energy . Today, despite all the progress of the last twenty years in renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy, about 80% of the world’s primary energy still comes from fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas. That number, which comes as a surprise to many, highlights the challenge of a rapid transition to renewable energy. What new technologies, new breakthroughs, can speed up the move away from fossil fuels?

Many students will be interested in the environmental impacts of energy use,  especially air and water pollution and climate change. We now know that burning fossil fuels is the main driver of accelerated climate change and that to avoid its potentially catastrophic consequences—extreme storms, droughts, floods, heat waves, and wildfires—the world needs to reduce man-made greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, to zero within the next three decades. Are there realistic pathways to a “Net Zero” energy economy by the year 2050? What are the consequences if the Net Zero target is missed? Can carbon dioxide be removed from the atmosphere artificially? Can climate be “geoengineered” to avoid excessive warming?

Other students will be interested in energy’s  social and economic impacts . Moving away from fossil fuels will be hard enough on its own, but more difficult still is making this transition while providing modern energy services to the hundreds of millions of people around the world who now lack them. This is the challenge of Energy Equity and Environmental Justice: Nearly 500 million people today have no access to electricity; 2.5 billion have no access to modern energy for cooking or heating. Moreover, much of today’s dirtiest energy infrastructure is located near marginalized communities. What social and economic changes are needed to provide “Affordable and Clean Energy for All,” one of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals ?

The three aspects of energy just described form the three multidisciplinary tracks of Energy Studies: (Track 1) Energy Science & Technology, (Track 2) Energy & Environment, (Track 3) Energy & Society. Students in the program take at least 2 courses in each of the 3 tracks. One of the six courses should normally include the Energy Studies seminar, Topics in World Energy (ENRG 300), which can be taken during junior or senior year (exceptions can be granted by the Certificate Director). Students also have the option (not requirement) of doing a capstone project in senior year in the Energy Studies senior seminar (ENRG 400). 

Two of the courses taken for Energy Studies can count toward the requirements of the student’s major. One of the six courses counting for Energy Studies can be taken Pass/Fail or Credit/D/Fail.

Students can declare their candidacy to complete the Energy Studies Interdisiplinary Certificate by filling out a form on the Registrar’s Office website ( HERE ). Submitting an application to the program is no longer required. Completing the form will register a student in Energy Studies with Yale College, generate an email to the program, and put Energy Studies into the student’s Degree Audit.

Graduates of the program are invited to join the Yale Alumni in Energy organization.

BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

Yale Climate & Energy Institute (2009-16) launched the Energy Studies Undergraduate Scholars program in the fall of 2013 for a five-year trial period with a curriculum encouraging undergraduates to explore the links between modern energy use and climate change. More than one hundred students completed the program’s requirements during its first five years, with nearly all going on to careers in energy-related fields. In May 2018, the Yale Faculty of Arts & Sciences voted to continue Energy Studies as a Multidisciplinary Academic Program (MAP) for another five-year term. In February 2023, the faculty approved Energy Studies as one of the new Interdiscipllinary Certficate programs in Yale College, making it a part of the regular curriculum. Thirty graduates in the Class of 2023 completed the program’s requirements, bringing the total number of Yale Energy Scholars to 275. Nearly 100 rising seniors, juniors, and sophomores are enrolled in the curriculum for the 2023-24 academic year. 

The laws expressing the relations between energy and matter are not soley of importance in pure science. They necessarily come first…in the world record of human experience, and they control, in the last resort, the rise or fall of political systems, the freedom or bondage of nations, the movements of commerce and industry, the origin of wealth and poverty and…general physical welfare.  — Frederick Soddy, Matter and Energy , 1912 (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1921)

It is fashionable to denigrate the achievements of modern industrial society [based on an abundance of energy] and compare them unfavourably with the imagined virtues of a simpler past…Of course they have not brought universal happiness. But it is silly to maintain that they have not freed many people from a great deal of pain and misery. The most serious objection to them is their exclusiveness. They have been confined to too few people. The challenge to democracy is to retain as much as possible of these good things while managing the great changes required in adjusting to a lower-energy way of life. If it fails, then the collapse into an authoritarianism of either the political right or left seems inevitable. — Gerald Foley, The Energy Question , 1976

Designing effective measures to slow or prevent climate change requires understanding not only the physical laws that carbon dioxide obeys, but also the more fluid laws of politics and economics. — William Nordhaus,  The Climate Casino, 2015 (Nobel Prize in Economics, 2018)

Tropical Forest Landscapes

Conservation, Restoration

& Sustainable Use

Online Certificate Program

• Overview and Courses
• How It Works
• What You Will Learn
• Instruction Team
• Program Experience
• Why YSE and ELTI
• How to Apply
• Technical Requirements
• Program Coordinators & Mentors
• YSE Faculty & Experts
• Student and Post-Graduate Fellows
• Guest Contributors

Program Structure

• What to Expect

Capstone Project

• Fundamentals
• Field Course
• Important Dates  
• Scholarships
• Application
• Testimonials  

Contact Us  

T his program builds on ELTI's decade of experience with high-touch, experiential online learning. Our diverse team of Yale instructors and global experts showcase scientific theory and practice, highlighting experiences and perspectives from around the world.

This program includes:

• Four core courses (8 weeks each): Dive deep into four core themes and build an interdisciplinary understanding of tropical forest landscape management.
• Capstone project course (12 months): Learn tools for project planning and put learning into practice as you develop an implementable project plan.
• One optional field course (1 week): Experience concepts coming into life on-the-ground through an experiential tour of a tropical forest landscape.

Read more about courses  

What to Expect?

Access high quality content, engage with diverse participants and experts and build your skills. Each week offers a chance to explore new concepts, tools, and perspectives about sustainably managing tropical forest landscapes.

The program is designed to be flexible with your work schedules and committments, requiring around six hours of coursework per week. All required coursework is online, meaning you can study from anywhere in the world, at your own pace.

Engage with the course themes through 130+ recorded video lectures and case studies presented by 70+ international guest experts. Additionally, participants access  curated course libraries containing cutting-edge scientific research, synthesis papers and practical guides.

Interaction and exchange

Develop a network and community of practice with instructors and peers in weekly live sessions and discussion forums. 

Practical assignments

Practice skills and apply knowledge through weekly reflections, skill-building assignments, and an implementable project — all with feedback from the experts. 

Develop a suite of project tools to apply to a real-world project in the yearlong Capstone project course. Learn underlying principles of project planning, practice techniques, and apply concepts to the project of your choice.

Lead Instructor

Dr. Amy Vedder (subject to change)

Sample Course Overview (2020)

Build your skills

• Design and plan a specific conservation and restoration project—these can be field initiatives, policies, and programs at any scale
• Practice concepts and tools of each course and apply them to your initiative
• Receive feedback from faculty members, mentors and peers
• Learn about the initiatives that your peers are planning
• Boost your presentation skills
• Create a robust project plan for your initiative and develop skills to make it happen

Fundamentals: Ecological and Social Concepts

Build a foundation in important ecological and social concepts. Explore the importance of tropical forests, develop an understanding of global processes and drivers, and begin planning your own project.

Lead Instructors

Dr. Mark Ashton & Dr. Eva Garen (subject to change)

Sample Course Overview (2023)

• Learn ecological principles that govern the disturbance and recovery of tropical ecosystems
• Understand and leverage ecological processes when considering conservation and restoration strategies
• Evaluate historical context and perspectives and how they influence current social dynamics and land uses
• Learn how governance and social dynamics influence different motivations and opportunities for conservation and restoration
• Incorporate knowledge from many disciplines and perspectives into project and program design and planning
• Learn about monitoring and evaluation and how careful design of a monitoring strategy is instrumental to project success

People: Human Dimensions and Engagement

Learn about the complex socio-economic and political factors that drive the actions and decisions of stakeholders in forest landscapes. Evaluate your own social context, while considering how to avoid adverse social outcomes for projects.

Dr. Eva Garen & Dr. David Neidel (subject to change)

• Evaluate existing assumptions and biases and recognize unintended consequences of activities
• Understand the larger socio-economic and political contexts that drive the actions of people and communities in forest landscapes
• Examine and “unpack” the complexities of political and social stratification in communities and stakeholder groups
• Recognize how management and access to resources differ among stakeholders and learn how to adapt activities to avoid exacerbating inequalities
• Develop an understanding of various land tenure and knowledge systems in order to support sustainable practices
• Apply tools and frameworks to engage people and institutions in different contexts and at varying scales 

Strategies: Land Use Planning and Implementation

Develop the skills to assess and plan on-the-ground conservation and restoration activities. Integrate what you learn about social and biophysical considerations to create locally adapted strategies .

Dr. Florencia Montagnini, Dr. Luke Browne, Dr. Oswald Schmitz (subject to change)

• Understand the importance of a landscape approach to conservation and restoration to preserve ecological functionality in multi-use landscapes
• Analyze how the degree of degradation, relevant landscape elements and social drivers of landscape change (past, current, future) influence appropriate strategies
• Evaluate the range of land use interventions, their advantages and disadvantages, and how to apply conservation and restoration activities
• Learn how the sustainable management of forests and agricultural lands can advance conservation, restoration and production goals in mosaic landscapes
• Identify the principles underlying key ecosystem services (soil conservation, water filtration, biodiversity conservation, carbon storage and climate change resiliency) and design interventions that promote their recovery
• Learn basic principles for the design of payments for ecosystem services schemes

Funding: Financial Concepts and Tools

Learn where funding for conservation and restoration comes from and how to match your project with financial support. Develop a project budget and funding plan while exploring the world of conservation finance. 

Namrita  Kapur, MBA & MEM and David Meyers, MBA & PhD (subject to change)

Sample Course Overview (2024)

• Understand how the potential for revenue influences decision-making about which funding sources are most appropriate for conservation and restoration initiatives
• Assess the relevance, risks and opportunities for  charitable donations, public programs and  for-profit investment to  your proposed  initiatives
• Identify potential funding sources,  learn strategies to secure funding and address associated trade-offs
• Develop a project budget and practice applying financial concepts
• Recognize how different contexts - type of project, location, other factors - enable or limit access to different kinds of funding
• Consider how best to communicate with potential project funders, so that funding “pitches” can best meet their needs and expectations

Field Course (Optional): Conservation and Restoration in Practice

Immerse for one week in the tropics, apply theory to practice and learn about what is happening on the ground.

•   Dates to be announced
•    6-Day Field Course

Field instructors vary based on location.

• Visit demonstration sites where conservation and restoration initiatives take place
• See in detail what it takes to make a project plan become an initiative carried out on the ground
• Meet environmental leaders — including land owners, farmers, ranchers and extension workers — who are making a difference in the field
• Practice skills that you gained in the online courses and capstone project
• Enhance your teamwork skills and develop a community with your peers, instructors and environmental leaders in the topics

Possible locations

Each year, the field course will take place at one of ELTI's training landscapes in the tropics. Location will be determined based on the interest and availability of accepted participants and partner organizations working on-the-ground.  The 2024 field course will be:

Brazil (2024)

Primary partners: Institute for Ecological Research (IPÊ); Federal University of Southern Bahia (UFSB)

ELTI’s Brazil site is located in the south of Bahia state, Brazil in the Atlantic Forest biome. The Brazilian Atlantic Forest biome stands out for its remarkable levels of endemism and species diversity. Participants will deepen their understanding of tropical rainforest ecology and strategies for forest restoration and conservation in a complex human-dominated landscape. Participants will meet with local organizations and landowners who are pioneers in regenerative agriculture, native species reforestation, and agroforestry systems.

Previous field courses were held in:

Colombia (2023)

Primary partner: Center for Research on Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems (CIPAV)

This course was held at two landscapes in the Valle del Cauca region: El Hatico Nature Reserve and the Smallholder Community of Bellavista. Over six days, participants deepened their understanding of sustainable land use and restoration by visiting demonstration sites, learning about agroforestry, silvopastoral and restoration practices, and understanding the role of participatory research and generational exchange. By interacting with farmers and local community members who have transitioned to sustainable land use practices and committed to conservation, participants learned about the values and motivations of people who have worked hard to enhance their livelihoods and the environment.

Panama (2023)

Primary partners: Achotines Research Station and the Association of Livestock; Agro-Silvopastoral Producers of Pedasí (APASPE)

Panama's Azuero Peninsula is a largely deforested dry tropical ecosystem comprised of a mosaic landscape of cattle ranching, subsistence and commercial agriculture, tourism development and forest fragments.  On a variety of interpretive trails, research sites, demonstration areas, and silvopastoral model farms, participants engaged in hands-on field activities and interacted with local landowners and community associations to learn firsthand about motives, strategies, and challenges for land management decisions.

Philippines (2020 & 2023)

Primary partner: Visayas State University (VSU)

On the island of Leyte, the landscape is largely dominated by the production of corn, coconuts, sugarcane and irrigated rice. Participants deepened their understanding of tropical forest ecology by visiting a Key Biodiversity Area, learning about the origins of the native species reforestation approach called Rainforestation, visiting demonstration sites, conducting a site assessment, propagating forest tree species, helping develop a Rainforestation site, and learning about ongoing research and applied conservation and restoration efforts. They will also learn how the Rainforestation process addresses complex land tenure and other governance challenges. Participants will interact with local community members and community organizers who have implemented Rainforestation to understand their motives and experiences.

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At the startup Running Tide's facility in Iceland, wood chips are loaded onto a barge for disposal at sea. Running Tide

Scientists Are Trying to Coax the Ocean to Absorb More CO2

For billions of years, the oceans have been absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere. Now, to boost that drawdown, startup companies and researchers are experimenting with ‘marine carbon dioxide removal’ by altering the chemistry of the ocean and sinking biomass to the seafloor.

By Andrew S. Lewis • April 22, 2024

Last May in Grundartangi, a small port in western Iceland, a barge piled high with wood chips began making regular trips to a patch of ocean 190 miles from the coast. By September, almost 20,000 tons — about 1,400 dump trucks’ worth — of “wood waste” had been pushed overboard. This was no attempt to clandestinely offload trash into the sea. Instead, it was one of the latest efforts in the race to rid the atmosphere of excess carbon dioxide.

Most people have heard of land-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) schemes, most notably “ direct air capture .” Iceland is a pioneer in this realm — the Climeworks Orca plant, located not far from the country’s capital, Reykjavik, is vacuuming 4,000 metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere and injecting it deep into the earth each year. But that is far from the amount experts say is necessary. In its most recent assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that carbon dioxide removal “is required to achieve global and national targets” of limiting warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees C to avoid “major, irreversible ecological and social impacts.”

To be exact, the IPCC said that removing as much as 15 gigatons of carbon per year may be necessary to stay below the 1.5-degree threshold. That means capturing the equivalent of the annual exhaust of 3.3 billion gasoline-powered cars for 80 years. “This isn’t a one solution problem,” says Nicholas Ward, an earth scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). “We don’t necessarily need that 15-gigaton solution that’s going to solve all of our emissions problems — we need a tool bag of a bunch of five-percent solutions.”

Little is known about how effective these techniques are in combatting global warming — or about the range of unintended consequences.

Running Tide, the seven-year-old U.S.-based start-up that’s experimenting with woodchips in Iceland, is betting that the ocean is just the place to perfect these small solutions, in the form of marine carbon dioxide removal, or mCDR. For billions of years, the ocean has been absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere, reducing it to different forms of carbon that circulate via currents or settle to the seafloor. Today, the ocean soaks up 30 percent of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, a capacity that is 42 times greater than the atmosphere’s. Running Tide wants to take advantage of this system by “deploying” timber industry “wood waste,” which is often sold as feedstock to be burned for bioenergy or simply left to rot — processes that release the wood’s stored carbon back into the air.

“We want the simplest possible way of doing what we need to do,” says Kristinn Hróbjartsson, the general manager of Running Tide in Iceland. “If we can do that with a golf-ball-sized piece of wood, we would rather do that than through some giant process.”

Other mCDR companies are experimenting with growing CO2-consuming aquatic plants, like kelp and algae, then sinking them into the deep ocean or burying them in the earth, much like Iceland’s Climeworks Orca facility buries the carbon it captures from the air. Still others are pumping seawater through electrodialysis filtering systems that both increase the water’s ability to sequester carbon and remove excess acid, a byproduct of CO2 that can devastate marine species.

The Running Tide facility gathers wood chips that will be dumped into the ocean. Running Tide

No matter the method, and despite the rapidly expanding ecosystem of researchers, private companies, venture capitalists, and governments focusing their attention and money on mCDR, the reality is that little is known about how effective these techniques are in combatting global warming — or about the range of unintended consequences they may have on the marine environment. “It’s fair to say that regulations are lagging behind the pace of both research and industry investment,” says Ward, whose lab is part of the U.S. Department of Energy. “Research dollars aren’t unlimited, and in our case they’re taxpayer money, so we should be thinking about the solutions with the most potential.”

Marine carbon dioxide removal is a form of geoengineering, perhaps the most polarizing word in climate science today. Although scientists and governments seem more alarmed by atmospheric geoengineering efforts, like altering the reflective capacity of the sky with injections of sulfur dioxide , they have also expressed concerns about mCDR, if only because it is so little understood. Iceland’s small size, and its acknowledgement of the urgency of the climate crisis, have made it an ideal incubator for mCDR science. But the IPCC’s and other groups’ increasingly dire warnings about the need to act now, and to act in a multitude of ways that include mCDR, has been loud enough to get the attention of much larger governments, including the Biden administration.

Instead of using electricity to shock the acid from seawater, some companies are experimenting with alkaline rocks.

Last year, the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) created a program specifically aimed at supporting the development of technology to improve scientists’ ability to measure and monitor carbon in the ocean. In October, the program — called Sensing Exports of Anthropogenic Carbon Through Ocean Observation (SEA-CO2) — announced its first tranche of funding: $36 million to be distributed among 11 labs, academic institutions, and private companies in nine states.

Ward and his colleagues at PNNL’s Sequim, Washington, campus have been awarded just over $2 million to develop models and lab experiments to better understand the effectiveness and impact of one of the better-understood mCDR techniques — ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE). Reducing the acidity of seawater increases its alkalinity; the higher its alkalinity, the more atmospheric CO2 it can absorb and transform into stabler, inorganic carbon, which is less likely to seep back into the air. Since last year, the company Ebb Carbon has been operating its OAE system at the Sequin campus, filtering seawater through a series of membranes that, when pulsed with electricity, extract its acid. With its federal grant, Ward says, the lab will be testing OAE methods from a handful of other companies.

An Ebb Carbon system that can make seawater less acidic, allowing it to absorb more carbon dioxide. PNNL

Matthew Eisaman, Ebb Carbon’s cofounder and an associate professor in Yale University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, says that electrodialysis can also be used to alkalinize salt brine from desalination plants. Such facilities, according to Eisaman, yield around 40 billion gallons of brine a day, globally, most of which is discharged into the sea. “If you convert all that salt to alkalinity with the process we’re pursuing,” he says, more than 1 billion tons of CO2 are pulled from the air and stored in the ocean per year. To reduce acidification at oceanic scales would be impossible, but Eisaman says that isn’t Ebb Carbon’s goal. He pointed to the oyster farms in the bays and estuaries around Sequin that have been suffering from acidification, which thins the shells of bivalves. “You could use this to kind of keep that relatively small local body of water similar to a preindustrial equilibrium that is ideal for shellfish.”

Instead of using electricity to shock the acid from seawater, other companies are experimenting with alkaline rocks, like basalt or olivine, which over thousands of years break down and make their way into the oceans. To speed up that natural process, often called “enhanced rock weathering,” the material can be mined, pulverized, and mixed into the ocean. Eisaman argues that “open systems” like this, which use the Earth’s own carbon cycle instead of “closed systems” like direct air capture, are “approaches that will have the potential to scale gigatons and at low cost.” (Running Tide also coats its wood chips with an alkaline material, with the goal of simultaneously transferring CO2 to the ocean and combating acidification.)

“We’re intervening in the natural world, which means we need to be very careful about what we do,” says a startup company manager.

At Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, scientists will be using their portion of the SEA-CO2 funding to develop sensors that can be attached to scientific moorings and autonomous underwater vehicles to continuously measure carbon concentrations in seawater. Such sensors would benefit companies that aim to grow macroalgae — seaweed and kelp — that draw large amounts of CO2 from the air, then sink them into the deep ocean. But some scientists say such efforts are risky. As it breaks down in the water column, this biomass produces organic carbon that “can be eaten by bacteria, which causes all sorts of transformations in the environment,” says Ward. “For example, on the seafloor, you have organic carbon that can transform into different greenhouse gases, like nitrous oxide and methane, depending on the conditions. If we’re not monitoring for production of these other greenhouse gases, we can’t tell you exactly how much carbon was truly sequestered.”

Running Tide, in fact, offers a cautionary tale about sinking macroalgae. In 2021, the company filed a patent for a floating apparatus seeded with kelp and “enhanced with a nutrient payload” of iron oxide to spur the growth of phytoplankton blooms, which can consume large amounts of atmospheric CO2. The plan raised enough concerns about unintended consequences that some of the company’s scientists reportedly quit . In a 2022 article published in Nature Ecology & Evolution , the University of Tasmania marine biochemist Phillip Boyd and coauthors modeled the potential impacts of apparatuses like that proposed by Running Tide, concluding that they would likely present a “range of biological threats” for offshore ecosystems, from altered water chemistry to the introduction of invasive microorganisms. Asked to respond to that criticism, Running Tide’s Hróbjartsson said in an email, “We would never, and never have, deployed anything into the ocean that isn’t deemed at most a minor or transitory impact on the ocean environment by best available science.”

Chemist Kai Schulz adds rock powder to seawater as part of a study in Kiel, Germany, on making the ocean less acidic. Michael Sswat / GEOMAR

Boyd says that electrochemical technology is a safer approach because it’s better understood. “We want to try and incentivize methods that are, number one, safe; number two, are effective for a long duration; and, number three, are readily verifiable.” With biomass deployments, he says, “we’re not sure what the outcome will be.”

Hróbjartsson agrees that more research needs to be done on mCDR, noting that much of the company’s efforts are in the lab, and the wood waste pilot was just a small experiment. “Obviously, we are intervening in the natural world, which means we need to be very careful about what we do. And moving off fossil fuels — it’s not going to be without some impact on the environment, too,” Hróbjartsson says. “But I think everybody agrees that we need to do something, and we need to have a full arsenal of tools available for us to deal with a problem.”

Ultimately, Boyd and his coauthors concluded that there was a great need for just the kind of research that the SEA-CO2 program will produce. “Marine carbon removal is a very challenging field, because it’s not just about the science,” Boyd says. “There’s the technology aspect, the economics, the communicating to the public, the regulatory frameworks, and then there’s the markets. And, as far as I can see, none of those are really fit for purpose at the moment.”

Some scientists say CO2 removal is simply a distraction from the urgency of the climate crisis and an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels.

Despite the fact that scientists are only just beginning to look into the effectiveness of mCDR, private carbon markets are flourishing, and private investors have been betting big on its success. Some of the largest names in tech have already pumped tens of millions of dollars into Ebb Carbon, Running Tide, and others.

Of course, recent years have shown the grave danger of Silicon Valley’s favorite mantra, “move fast and break things.” When it comes to the environment, moving fast may be critical, but breaking things can be catastrophic. Some scientists have made the point that carbon dioxide removal — and the sale of those carbon credits — is simply a distraction from the urgency of the climate crisis and an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels. Friederike Otto, a lead author of the latest IPCC report, recently told The Guardian that the tools to keep warming to 1.5 degrees are already available and completely understood: stop extracting fossil fuels, scale back industrial farming and deforestation, the list goes on. “We should act as if CDR will never be achievable,” Otto said. “We do not have a technology at the moment that works at scale… so we should make our policies as if CDR is not an option.”

Boyd agrees that a CDR technology that is safe, effective at storing carbon for long durations, verifiable, and scalable does not yet exist. But we need the acceleration that private business and carbon markets can bring, he says. “If we are going to build this partnership with businesses, [which] have the tools and the wherewithal and the infrastructure to really drive this, then there has to be a more substantive conversation around what the speed bumps are,” he says. “It’s not that we want to hold [companies] back, but at the same time, the ocean is a complex place.”

Correction, April 23, 2024 : An earlier version of this article incorrectly quoted Running Tide’s Kristinn Hróbjartsson as saying the company has no plans to sink macroalgae into the ocean. The company is currently studying the impact of sinking macroalgae.

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From left to right:  Assistant Professor Alvaro Romero-Calvo, Oscar Haase, Samuel Stoknes, Vishal Rachapudi, Aiden Wilson, Elliot Kantor , and AE Chair Mitchell Walker.

Team Orbital Anomaly Recovery System (OARS), a five-person team sponsored by  Intelsat, won the most outstanding aerospace engineering project at Georgia Tech’s Spring 2024 Capstone Design Expo . There were 204 teams across three colleges, from 12 schools presenting their projects before 200 judges in the McCamish Pavillion. OARS team members include Oscar Haase, Elliot Kantor, Vishal Rachapudi, Samuel Stoknes,  and Aidan Wilson .

The AE School showcased 13 teams , each tasked with tackling a sophisticated aerospace engineering challenge. Undergraduate teams opted for either space exploration, vertical lift, or fixed-wing aerospace engineering courses to guide and drive their semester-long senior projects.

OARS Team from left to right: Vishal Rachapudi, Samuel Stoknes, Oscar Haase, Elliott Kantor and Aidan Wilson

"OARS' project leverages a good fundamental understanding of space systems engineering to solve a very practical industry problem. Their work has the potential of saving millions in operational costs to their sponsor, Intelsat, and paves the way for new collaborations between our school and industry partners. Working with them and Intelsat this semester has been a real pleasure," said 

Assistant Professor Álvaro Romero-Calvo

OARS 2024 Capstone Design Expo Poster

The team worked hard and they asked good, well-thought questions. It was a pleasure and refreshing to work with them.

Joe Chan, Flight Dynamics Director at IntelSat (team sponsor)

Intelsat created the OARS Team project. The company operates numerous geostationary satellites that stay above the same point over Earth and provide communications 24 hours a day. The OARS project focused on the issue of spinning satellites and created an algorithm to detect a spinning satellite and direct it back to the correct direction. 

“Satellites may spin because of micrometeorites or even a misfired thruster. We created a simulation to provide a better workflow and a better tool for Intelesat to correct the satellite and have it point back towards Earth so that people can regain their internet access as quickly as possible,” Rachapudi said.

They used a game engine called Godot to create the visual simulation. For the math and controls, they used MATLAB on the back end.

“The simulation is for Intelsat to verify and test what the control algorithm suggests as the correct thruster firings to produce the optimal reset pattern,” Rachapudi explained. “It’s basically a tool to visualize it and see what's going on because before, Intelsat’s workflow had them just looking at graphs and telemetry data in an Excel spreadsheet. But we created a visual tool for them actually to see what's going on.”

The biggest challenge the team faced was understanding where the satellite was actually pointing while it was spinning because the sensor data only works when the satellite is pointing at Earth. 

“Basically, the center is like a camera pointing at Earth, and there's a frame. If the Earth is out of that frame, then we have no idea where it's pointing, and we can’t see Earth. So, we had to figure out how to propagate that into the future and know where it would be pointing.”

The team also had to deal with the control algorithm. Actual vehicles don’t act perfectly, so when they apply a thruster, it doesn’t act instantaneously. So implementation had to account for physical lag and physical dynamic application of the thrust. They spent long hours working to perfect it. Rachapudi credits Stoknes with playing a big part in overcoming this challenge.

“What we did couldn’t have been done without the great people we had. The win is a testament to the team,” Rachapudi concluded.

Orbital 2 with Earth

Orbital Anomaly Software

Angle Rates and Tables

Ray cast orientation and path trace

Two teams tied for the best overall project, Interdisciplinary Team  Seekr Assistive Airport Navigation and Biomedical Team  Left Atrial Files . This is the second year in a row that two teams have taken the top spot. In a video , Atlanta Mayor and Georgia Tech Engineering graduate Andre Dickens congratulated the 2024 Capstone Expo participants.

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School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

College of engineering, mobility innovation shines as ece interdisciplinary teams take top prizes at spring capstone design expo.

Navigating a bustling airport can be a daunting challenge for visually impaired individuals, but  Seekr , an interdisciplinary team of students , including three computer engineering majors , believes it has created a viable solution to the challenge. 

Attendees at the Spring 2024 Senior Capstone Expo agreed, voting Seekr to a tie for Best Overall Project during the event, which took place on April 23 at McCamish Pavillion

The project aims to  restore independence to blind and visually impaired airline passengers . Team members discovered that travelers with limited vision frequently rely on video calls with friends or family for assistance, while others depend on airport staff to push them to their gates in wheelchairs.

Seekr offers independence with a crossbody bag that provides guided voice directions and beeps to help travelers make their way through the terminal. Users would borrow the bag from the airport and turn in as they board their flight.

Team Seekr pictured Aislinn Abbot- ME ,Alaz Cig-ME, Andrew Gunawan - CmpE, Hanrui Wang -CS, Jackie Chen – CmpE, James Mead – ME , Rithvi Ravichandran - CmpE, and their advisor David Anderson.

Team Seekr created a wearable device to help visually impaired travelers walk through airports. 

ECE winning team Electric Pump for Rocket Propellants designed an electric pump which can be used to deliver liquid propellants into a rocket engine.

Another mobility project, Team EMG, comprised of six electrical and one mechanical engineering students, won for Best Interdisciplinary Team. They developed a cost-effective, electromyography (EMG)-controlled locomotion system for tetraplegics that allows users to control an electrified wheelchair through detectable arm movements, enhancing their independence with technology that can be adapted to any manual wheelchair.

Electric Pump for Rocket Propellants won Best School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Project chosen from 20 ECE teams represented at the Expo. The team designed an electric pump that can be used to deliver liquid propellants into a rocket engine.

This semester’s Senior Design Expo showcased 204 team projects from 12 schools and three different Georgia Tech colleges. Students across disciplines collaborated to innovate, underscoring the importance of bringing diverse minds together, paving the way for innovative solutions that hold promise for shaping a better future.

Team Zoomee seeks to provide an affordable and easy-to-use alternative to the currently available bicycle electrification packages.

Team Roller Coaster Tycoon built a real-world roller coaster simulator control system.

Team Vitamin ECE created an automated produce peeler that uses computer vision to peel fruit. 

Team Analog Vector-Matrix Multiplier in FPAA implemented a neural network classifier using analog circuit components.

Team FaceID Door Unlock created a hands-free door unlocking system that uses facial recognition to automatically lock or unlock the door based on the user's identity.

Team BeatBox developed an interactive multi-sensory musical experience in a phone booth-like enclosure.

ECE teams developed transformative solutions that look to revolutionize how humans interact with the world around them from improving urban mobility with AI-enabled traffic monitoring systems to pioneering low-power neural networks.

The Expo judges were industry professionals, as well as faculty and staff from across campus. This year’s Expo also welcomed more than 200 high school students as part of an outreach initiative where they explored science, technology, engineering, and math while serving as reviewers. The high schoolers picked two projects for special honorable mentions including one ECE team, AIRplanes, that is working to develop an autonomous drone design that can follow the terrain and fly low to the ground.

See all the winners from Capstone Expo and visit expo.gatech.edu for more projects.

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Smart traffic data collection.

Smart Traffic Data Collection through a AI-enabled traffic camera system.

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This project is focused on giving those inexperienced with semiconductor fabrication an opportunity to bridge the gap between theoretical and practical knowledge by building a simple solar cell.

A drone that can safely fly low to the ground by following the contours of the terrain unlocks many new autonomous flight possibilities.

The Landmine Detector, code-named Project MIDAS, is an avant-garde approach designed to revolutionize the daunting challenge of landmine detection.

A standard method to label passives using a minimal invasive process where an automatic process can be used to identify components on a board with prior knowledge; a process to remove components from a moderate complexity board and then sort those components by value.

The NESO (Nano Environmental Swimming Oceanographer) project is a pioneering initiative aimed at developing a state-of-the-art autonomous robotic vehicle, specifically designed for in-depth marine research.

Electric Pump for Rocket Propellants

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FaceID Door Unlock

The project is a consumer-oriented door unlocking mechanism which is designed to be hands-free by the use of an embedded system using a facial identification algorithm to determine if a door should be locked or unlocked based on the identity of the user trying to enter.

Smart Countertop

The Smart Countertop is a countertop that uses inductive power transfer to wirelessly power small kitchen appliances.

Roller Coaster Tycoon

A control system compatible with the CoasterDynamix system capable of simulating a real-world roller coaster’s control system.

The purpose of this project is to transform a standard fan into an intelligent and automated appliance that enhances user comfort and energy efficiency by monitoring and regulating room conditions.

Vitamin ECE

Automated Produce Peeler: peel fruits using computer vision.

Treble Makers

A guitar pedal that uses digital signal processing to alter the sound of an electric guitar with multiple audio effects.

BeatBox is an interactive multi-sensory musical experience in a phone booth-like enclosure.

Zoomee seeks to provide an affordable and easy-to-use alternative to the currently available bicycle electrification packages.

Botany Bros

The Plant Health Tracker is a device that monitors a plant’s humidity, soil moisture, temperature, and ambient light.

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BreathBand is a wearable device that monitors the depth and rhythm of a user’s breathing cycle for athletic performance.

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SandE is a robot that can autonomously clean beaches by picking up and storing trash while filtering out sand.

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Surgical Tool, Airport Navigation Aid Top Spring 2024 Capstone Expo

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College of Engineering

Surgical tool, airport navigation aid top spring 2024 capstone expo.

Projects that could help doctors save lives and restore independence for visually impaired travelers impress judges at semester-ending showcase.

A device that could save lives when things go wrong during surgery and a wearable to ease airport navigation for visually impaired people shared top honors at the Spring 2024 Capstone Design Expo April 23.

For the second Expo in a row, two teams tied in judging for the best overall project: Team Seekr with their navigation aid and Team Left Atrial Files with a catheter-based tool that quickly and safely retrieves a dislodged medical device in a patient’s heart. 

They were just two of 204 teams from 12 schools and four different Georgia Tech colleges at the Expo, a showcase of students’ semester-long senior design projects. An army of judges from industry and across campus selected the top project in each discipline, best interdisciplinary team, and overall best project. 

The five biomedical engineers on the Left Atrial Files team created a tool they called EmPath to recapture a dislodged clot-blocking device that’s implanted in the heart. 

In some patients with an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation, doctors place a small device in a pocket of their heart where blood clots often form. Those clots can leave the heart and cause strokes. But sometimes, after doctors insert the device, it gets loose and endangers the patient’s life. 

The EmPath tool uses a small net to capture it and a claw to quickly pull it out through a catheter.

It’s a project that was personal for several team members who’ve lost family members to strokes and related complications, including Emily Yan.

“My grandfather suffered from a stroke. And we believe it's one of the major reasons that he passed away,” Yan said. “We wanted to make something that would be able to save someone's life in a situation where they can't take blood thinners and they have to go under this procedure. If something goes wrong, there’s something to save them.”

Yan said the team has filed a provisional patent on their device alongside their sponsor, physician Kevin Graham.

The other top project aimed to restore independence to blind and visually impaired airline passengers . Team members found that travelers with limited vision often use video calls with friends or relatives to help them navigate. Others depend on airport personnel pushing them to the gate in a wheelchair.

Their solution is a device the size of a crossbody bag that passengers could borrow from the airport and turn in as they board their flight. It offers voice directions and beeps to help them make their way through the terminal.

See More Photos

A look at more projects and teams from the spring Expo. 

Team Seekr created a wearable device to help visually impaired travelers walk through airports. 

Team EMG Controlled Wheelchair created technology that controls a wheelchair with arm movements. 

MigraGuard created an ear plug that reduces the likelihood of migraine headaches during storms. 

GloSCOPE designed an affordable laparoscope to increase accessibility in low-to-middle income countries.

“Complaints to ADA coordinators [at airports] have been up 167% since 2020, so airports are really looking for a solution,” said team member Aislinn Abbott, a mechanical engineering major.

The team of mechanical and computer engineering and computer science students has tested their concept in large venues with nearly a dozen people with visual impairments. Airport testing is the next step, and the team is in conversation with several, including Atlanta’s. This summer, they’ll participate in the CREATE-X Startup Launch program to continue developing the idea and potentially turn it into a commercial venture.

Elsewhere at the Expo, teams worked with Georgia Power to use historical power outage data to more effectively develop and communicate power restoration estimates to customers during storms. They helped develop models for the Georgia Tech football team’s recruitment efforts and created a wearable device to help ease pain for migraine sufferers .

Students created a robotic boxer that can throw punches to help humans train. 

A device created by Team Well Done detects the doneness of steak without puncturing it.

Computer engineers devised a system that uses face identification software to lock and unlock house doors. 

Other projects included: 

• A low-cost motorized wheelchair system controlled by electromyography — the electrical activity of muscles. 
• A team that worked with restor3d to create a new retractor to give doctors better access during total shoulder replacement surgery and improve patient outcomes.
• A vibration absorber to help Volvo improve construction equipment energy efficiency .
• Two devices to help semiconductor manufacturer KLA keep cleanrooms clean .
• Tools to help clothing manufacturer Crystal sas automate sock packaging .
• An automated packaging line to help American Baitworks speed up packing their fishing baits.
• An under-the-counter system to wirelessly power small kitchen appliances .
• A beach-cleaning robot to remove litter while filtering out and leaving sand.

The spring Expo also welcomed more than 200 high school students to inspire them to explore science, technology, engineering, and math — and also to serve as reviewers. They picked two projects for special honorable mentions: an idea for improving battery recycling and an autonomous drone design that can follow the terrain and fly low to the ground .

The Expo also included more than 70 industry sponsors. Their donations support Transforming Tomorrow: The Campaign for Georgia Tech , a more than $2 billion comprehensive campaign designed to secure resources that will advance the Institute and its impact — on people’s lives, on the way we work together to create innovative solutions, and on our world — for decades to come.

See all the winners from Capstone Expo below and visit expo.gatech.edu for more projects.

Team RCT created a control system that allows roller coaster model enthusiasts to learn more about complex electrical and computer systems used on real rides. 

Biomedical engineering students aimed to decrease the time it takes to set up wound dressing systems by automating a currently manual process.

A team of mechanical engineers built a robotic system that builds floral arrangements . 

My Tab is an automated bartender that allows busy bars and venues to serve more customers. 

Atlanta Mayor and Georgia Tech engineering graduate Andre Dickens congratulates the 2024 Capstone Design Expo participants.

Capstone Results

Left atrial files.

OVERALL BEST PROJECT (TIE)

Left atrial appendage closure device retrieval 

• Mitali Gupte, BME (North Andover, MA)
• Santosh Nachimuthu, BME (Cumming, GA)
• Jeremiah Sirait, BME (Denver, CO)
• Emily Yan, BME (Atlanta, GA)
• Arda Yigitkanli, BME (Woodbridge)

Assisted airport navigation for the visually impaired

• Aislinn Abbott, ME (York, PA)
• Jackie Chen, CmpE (Calcutta, OH)
• Alaz Cig, ME (Istanbul, Turkey)
• Andrew Gunawan, CmpE (Austin, TX)
• James Mead, ME (Eatonton, GA)
• Rithvi Ravichandran, CmpE (Jacksonville, FL)
• Hanrui Wang, CS (Tianjin, China)

EMG Controlled Wheelchair

INTERDISCIPLINARY

Wheelchair control for tetraplegics

• Bareesh Bhaduri, EE (Knoxville, TN)
• Indraja Chatterjee, CmpE (Carmel, IN)
• Yash Fichadia, CmpE (Omaha, NE)
• Philip Kuhle, EE (Camas, WA)
• Nicholas Leone, EE (Orlando, FL)
• Kartik Parameswaran, EE (Chelmsford, MA)
• Eduardo Sanchez, ME (San Juan)

DANIEL GUGGENHEIM SCHOOL  OF AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Orbital anomaly recovery system 

• Oscar Haase (Pelham, MA)
• Elliot Kantor (Jacksonville, FL)
• Vishal Rachapudi (Hillsborough, NJ)
• Samuel Stoknes (Oslo)
• Aiden Wilson (Louisville, KY)

Gray and Nola

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

• Nola Timmins (New Orleans, LA)
• Gray Walters (Marietta, GA)  

WALLACE H. COULTER DEPARTMENT  OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

Improved hospital wound care device 

• Shangze Lyu (Zhengzhou, Henan, China)
• Deniz Onalir (Istanbul, Turkey)
• Aya Samadi (Lexington, KY)
• Xiaokun Xie (Jiangsu, China)

EcoPeach Solutions

SCHOOL OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

Sustainable fresh produce system for NASA 

• Jessica Brown, CE (Brooklyn, NY)
• Pearl Dumbu, CE (Pretoria, South Africa)
• Ananya Kumar, EnvE (Dacula, GA)
• Annabelle Sarkissian, EnvE (Atlanta, GA)

Electric Pump for Rocket Propellants

SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

• William Ewles, EE (Hamilton, Bermuda)
• Cody Kaminsky, EE (Fairfax, VA)
• Mihir Kasmalkar, EE (San Jose, CA)
• Ochogie Omot, EE (Atlanta, GA)

The Americoldest

H. MILTON STEWART SCHOOL  OF INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Labor planning model for Americold Logistics

• Rohan Bagade (Johns Creek, GA)
• Landen Ledford (Chatsworth, GA)
• Curran Myers (Alpharetta, GA)
• Chandler Pittman (Rome, GA)
• Justin Siegel (Dunwoody, GA)
• Stephen Sowatzka (Atlanta, GA)
• Nicholas Van (Savannah, GA)
• Ashley Wilds Jr. (Augusta, GA)

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN AND ENGINEERING

Clothing solution for post-mastectomy patients

• Fatimah Ahmed, ID (Atlanta, GA)
• Catherine Ettershank, ID (Suwanee, GA)
• Wyatt Pangan, ME (Austin, TX)
• Christopher Rowley, ME (West Chester)
• Max Shapiro, MSE (Atlanta, GA)

SCHOOL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Lignin-filled natural rubber for tread applications

• Katherine Cauffiel (Kennesaw, GA)
• Téa Cook (Simpsonville, SC)
• Ryan Cortes (Locust Grove, GA)
• Arian Patel (Leesburg, VA)
• Evan Wilson (Newnan, GA)

GEORGE W. WOODRUFF SCHOOL OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Total shoulder arthroplasty retractor set 

• Miguel Daly (Orange Park, FL)
• Maxwell Gart (Avon, CT)
• Isabelle Gustafson (Carrollton, GA)
• Sana Hafeez (Atlanta, GA)
• Lena Moller (Flowery Branch, GA)
• Claudia Vitale (Tampa, FL)

NUCLEAR AND RADIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING

Compact on-board reactor assembly for trains

• Evelyn Ayers (Chattanooga, TN)
• Samuel Cochran (Charlotte)
• Andrew Scheuermann (Evans, GA)
• Kayla Watanabe (Lincolnshire, IL)

Mobile Crisis Response

SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY (TIE)

Mental health crisis response

• Katie Adcock (Dublin, GA)
• Ann Brumbaugh (Atlanta, GA)
• Ashley Cotsman (Alpharetta, GA)
• Blaine Kantor (Suwanee, GA)
• Angela Kim (Cumming, GA)
• Clare Moegerle (Atlanta, GA)
• Adaiba Nwasike (Marietta, GA)

SCRAH Patriots

Sustainable, climate-resilient affordable housing

• Sophia Abedi (Alpharetta, GA)
• Noemi Carrillo (Marietta, GA)
• Linda Liu (Lawrenceville, GA)
• Lillian Mason
• Sophie Opolka
• Abigail Peters

Honorable Mentions

• Buzz Timer Pro , Interdisciplinary
• Reparations Art + Design Residency , Architecture
• Arterial Avengers , Interdisciplinary
• ROBO , Interdisciplinary
• PopUp Spaces , Interdisciplinary
• Plus Minus , Interdisciplinary
• AIRplanes , ECE

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