ISE grad student wins Systems Showdown competition

Auburn University students showcased their innovation and technical expertise at the recent INCOSE Systems Showdown, a systems engineering competition that provides participants with a platform to apply classroom knowledge to real-world challenges.

Hosted by Auburn’s chapter of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), the event brought together student teams to compete for cash prizes while demonstrating skills in systems thinking, design and analysis. The first-place winner received $1,000, while the second-place winner earned $500.

Diego Caputo, an industrial and systems engineering graduate student, took first place with his project, “ChapterCore,” a centralized management platform for student organizations. Ronen Lim, studying computer science, earned second place for his project, “Predictive Course Capacity and Bottleneck Analysis System.”

“INCOSE decided to host a systems engineering competition to spark a passion for systems engineering among students,” said Gabriella Hawkes, president of Auburn’s INCOSE chapter. “Students often do not have an outlet to explore systems engineering outside of coursework. This competition fills that need.”

Caputo’s winning project, ChapterCore, addresses common challenges faced by student organizations, including fragmented communication tools, inefficient information storage and difficulties during leadership transitions. The platform integrates multiple functions into a single application, allowing officers to manage operations, communicate with members and promote events more effectively. It also includes a system that incentivizes student engagement by tracking event attendance and awarding participation points.

“It came from a necessity,” Caputo said. “Student leaders are expected to manage a wide range of responsibilities and systems that are disconnected while also balancing classes, research and personal life. At the same time, members often lack incentives to stay engaged. ChapterCore was born from this gap.”

Caputo designed the system architecture and developed a functional prototype, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist with coding and implementation under a tight timeline. While the platform is not yet implemented at Auburn, he expressed interest in expanding the prototype into a fully deployable solution for campus organizations.

“I felt very honored,” Caputo said about winning the competition. “The competition included strong projects and talented peers, and the judging panel brought a high level of expertise to the evaluation.”

Lim’s second-place project focuses on improving academic planning through data-driven forecasting. His system enables advising departments to predict future course demand using factors such as historical pass rates, curriculum requirements and student data. The model aims to reduce course bottlenecks, improve student progression and support more efficient allocation of instructional resources.

“The event allowed students to improve the skills that they will use in their future careers,” Hawkes said. “Students leveraged their creativity, presentation skills and holistic viewpoints at the competition. These skills are foundational for systems engineers and will allow them to be better engineers in the future.”

Additional finalist teams included “Equal Opportunity Basketball Entry Systems,” developed by Reagan Atkins and Timothy Brandon, which proposes a lottery-based approach to distributing a portion of student basketball tickets, and “Smart Housing Accessibility,” created by Sally Ngo and Tuan Nguyen, a platform designed to help students identify affordable off-campus housing with efficient commute times.