 It’s not too late to submit an idea for this year’s JUMP into STEM student competition! The fourth year of the JUMP into STEM student competition launched on Monday, August 16, 2021, and there’s still time to submit an idea! Applications are due by November 12, 11:59 PM EST.
Three exciting, new challenges were developed for this program year:
Equal Access to Healthy Indoor Air: The objective of this challenge is to develop innovative, holistic solutions to address indoor air quality (IAQ) inequities in the United States. This topic relates to both the technical aspects of IAQ as well as other areas including IAQ-related policy, epidemiology, environmental justice, community economic impact, commercialization, codes and standards and appropriate metrics development.
Resilience for All in the Wake of Disaster: The objective of this challenge is to develop innovative holistic solutions to improve the resilience of the built environment, making equity a central focus of the proposed solution by strengthening the ability of communities—especially those that are underserved, marginalized and vulnerable—to adapt, persist and recover in the event of natural or manmade disruptive events.
Solving Market Adoption for Emerging Efficiency Technologies: The objective of this challenge is to develop innovative, holistic solutions that will increase the accessibility, purchase, installation and use of energy efficiency technologies in buildings—residential or commercial, new or existing—that will lead to reductions in energy use and carbon emissions and fewer inequalities in obtaining new technologies for identified stakeholder groups.
JUMP into STEM seeks to address a need for an increased number of graduates from building science programs in undergraduate, graduate, and vocational settings to cover workforce gaps in buildings specializations. Additionally, diversity among building science professionals will help the industry understand the behaviors and needs of building occupants; teams are encouraged to include members from different majors and from groups that are underrepresented or have been historically excluded from STEM fields based on, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, and gender. Teams must consist of 2–4 undergraduate and/or graduate students who are currently enrolled in a US college or university.
Industry professionals, academics, and representatives from the US Department of Energy and national laboratories will select winning teams for each challenge, with each team member receiving hour-long mentoring sessions and the opportunity to compete in the final event, which will be hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on January 27–28,2022. Eligible winners from the final event will be offered paid internships during Summer 2022 at ORNL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
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