Engineering for environmental stewardship, disaster resilience, urban livability, extreme habitats, transport service systems…. The focus areas of the Sonny Astani Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE) strategic vision encompass key challenges and opportunities to inspire entrepreneurial-minded engineers.
Each year, the department hosts the Innovate x LA: Das Family Student Competition in which students from across the university have the chance to develop and pitch impactful startup ideas informed by civil and environmental engineering concepts. The city of Los Angeles provides a test site for ideas with global application, motivated by the commitment to strengthen communities and address the ecological health of the planet.
From the kickoff in the fall semester up to Demo Day in the spring, student teams attend six monthly seminars and receive guidance from industry leaders and startup founders. This year, seminar speakers included social entrepreneur and technologist Mateo Abascal, startup founder Ralph Lin (managing director for the Viterbi Office of Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship) and social justice-oriented investor Emma Ohanian.
The startup ideas are put to the test on Demo Day, when teams present to a panel of industry leaders and compete for a $20,000 prize to develop the winning idea. The competition is enabled by the generous support of the Das family, and the 2024 panel included CEE alumni Santanu and Kelly Das, startup investor Matthew Shackleford, USC Chief Sustainability Officer Mick Dalrymple and strategist Jennifer Zhao from Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator.