Abstract
My capstone consists of two projects that are unrelated on the surface level, but are both about responsibility in complex systems. My technical project focuses on helping students navigate course scheduling more clearly through an AI-powered interactive scheduler that my team designed around accessibility, convenience, and better decision-making. My STS research paper, on the other hand, is focused on the problem of space debris accumulation and asks who is actually responsible for cleaning it up once it already exists. I chose my STS topic partly because of my personal interest in space. I have been drawn to space exploration and the sheer scale of the universe itself. I find space so fascinating because it is humbling in the sense that it is a representation of both our limits and our ambition as humans. That interest made me want to look closely at the waste and long-term risk of space activity which is admittedly one of the less exciting but still important aspects of the space industry. Even though my two projects address very different fields, they share the concern on what happens when systems become large, important and difficult to manage.
My technical project is focused on developing an AI-powered interactive course scheduler designed to make the process of planning a schedule at UVA more accessible and easier to understand. My group decided on our project as a response to a problem that many students have with the current SIS system. This issue was also personal to my team because we are all transfer students, so we had direct experience with how clunky, confusing, and difficult scheduling can be when trying to adjust to a new academic system like SIS. Usually, students are expected to know department codes, course numbers, and how to navigate a scheduling interface that is not very intuitive, especially for first-years, transfers, and other students who may not already be familiar with the system. In an attempt to solve this problem, we designed an application that allows students to search for courses and build schedules through a more natural and conversational interface. Rather than working entirely through rigid filters and disconnected pages on SIS, students using our scheduler would be able to explore options, check for conflicts, validate prerequisites, and compare possible schedules in a clearer and more interactive way.
My STS research paper focuses on space debris accumulation and examines how current governance systems frame responsibility for debris cleanup. More specifically, my paper asks who is actually responsible for cleaning up orbital debris once it already exists. While space debris is widely acknowledged as a serious threat to the long-term sustainability of space activity, my research found that most policies are clearer about preventing new space debris from being created than they are about assigning responsibility for removing debris that is already in orbit. Once debris becomes part of the shared orbital environment, it is a lot more difficult to assign cleanup responsibility clearly, and enforcement remains limited and uneven across actors and institutions. Rather than focusing only on the technical reasons for space debris accumulation, my research paper argues that there is a governance gap shaped by weak accountability, uneven enforcement, and unclear cleanup responsibility that also contributes to the issue.
Working on both projects helped me understand what STS contributes in practical engineering better. Looking at technical, organizational, and cultural factors together showed me that engineering problems cannot be approached through the technical aspect alone. Through my technical project, I learned that even a well-designed scheduling tool depends on how students actually experience university systems, what barriers students face prior to using the application, and whether the application makes academic planning more accessible for different kinds of users. In my STS research, the space debris issue showed that ethical responsibility in engineering involves more than making something efficient or functional. It is also about thinking about the long-term sustainability of the systems being created and the problems they may leave behind for others or the environment, and whether responsibility is clear when those systems become large and complex. Together, these projects helped me understand that I want to be an engineer who values usefulness and innovation, along with building systems that are accessible, responsible, and sustainable for the people affected by them.
