As winners of the final round of the competition, which took place from April 12 – 14, Lawson and Tinsley received internship offers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), respectively. ORNL and the U.S. Department of Energy sponsored the competition as well.

The economics students represented two interdisciplinary teams of Georgia Tech undergraduates who competed in JUMP into STEM as a key component of School of Public Policy Assistant Professor Omar Asensio’s Data Science and Public Policy course (PUBP 4803).

Asensio’s students were organized into two teams, both of which submitted research proposals for the Round 1 topic, entitled “Connecting the Right Data at the Right Time to Improve Residential Building Performance.” Both teams submitted research designs with the aim of identifying and designing approaches to influence homeowner decisions to optimize their energy use.

The student teams, their associated majors, and their proposal titles are listed below:

• Team 1: Cade Lawson (Economics), Taylor Strickland (Public Policy), Rachel Wexler (Public Policy)
  • “Behavioral Incentives on Older Adults to Reduce Energy Consumption: A Randomized Encouragement Design”
     
• Team 2: Varun Gupta (Computer Science), McKenzie Rhone (Economics and International Affairs), Sarah Tinsley (Economics), Roderick Tyler (Economics)
  • “Home Energy Score Interactive Dashboard”

The School of Economics and School of Public Policy are both units of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.