The project’s objective is to generate public awareness of political issues related to voting districts, proposing a mathematical algorithm to automatically redistrict regions using census data. Project Redistrict, a project of Georgia Tech eDemocracy, has the long-term goal of constructing an intuitive website that redistricts areas based on parameters such as population equality, density and contiguity.

“The team worked very hard throughout the term and is very excited to be awarded this grant,” said Sheetul Hassan, a third-year materials science and engineering student and team leader for the project. “The grant money will be used primarily for improvement of our innovation through community outreach programs and in much-needed software. This is a great honor and we look forward to the future success of this project.”

Team members include industrial and systems engineering students Charlotte Huang, Swetha Krishnakumar and Xiaotong Yang; computer science student Himani Manglani; and public policy student Stephanie Noble. Rich DeMillo, distinguished professor in the College of Computing, served as faculty advisor.

The honor includes $1,000 for project implementation, $500 in student scholarships and a $1,000 stipend to DeMillo. The team will be presented with certificates of merit at Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson’s office on May 5.