09/18/2025
A powerful summer workshop at Auburn University helped researchers move their work beyond the lab by focusing on one central question: Who does this help?
Launch Your Societal Impact! — a workshop developed as a partnership between the College of Sciences and Mathematics (COSAM) and Auburn’s New Venture Accelerator (NVA) — brought together 12 interdisciplinary teams to explore how research can translate into real-world solutions. Over six weeks, participants built the skills and mindset to conduct stakeholder discovery, validate ideas and design projects that create measurable impact on societal needs.
“It provided an opportunity to explore how research and technology could translate into meaningful, real-world impact, especially for underserved populations,” said Lang Zhou, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, working under the mentorship of Pengyu Chen and leading Team RapidSense. “The workshop helped us shift from a purely scientific focus to a more human-centered, implementation-ready approach.”
Learn more: https://wire.auburn.edu/content/cosam/2025/08/26930-launch-your-societal-impact.php
Auburn’s Launch Your Societal Impact! workshop brought together 12 interdisciplinary teams to turn research into real-world solutions. From smart health tech to environmental monitoring, the program highlighted how science at Auburn can drive measurable societal benefit.