Two students speaking together at a CREATE-X workshop.

The CREATE-X program has received the 2025 ABET Innovation Award from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), earning a $10,000 cash prize and international recognition. The award honors programs that challenge the status quo in technical education and demonstrate a measurable impact on student learning in ABET-accredited disciplines, such as natural sciences, computing, engineering, and engineering technology. CREATE-X was founded in 2014 by College of Engineering faculty Steve McLaughlin and Raghupathy “Siva” Sivakumar, former Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering Chair Ravi Bellamkonda, Georgia Tech Professor Emeritus and former Vice Provost for Graduate and Undergraduate Studies Ray Vito, and entrepreneur and Georgia Tech alumnus Chris Klaus to help students launch real startups and gain entrepreneurial confidence.

“This recognition from ABET highlights what we’ve seen firsthand: When students are given access to the right resources and mentorship, their potential to lead and innovate is limitless,” said Georgia Tech Interim Provost Karie Davis-Nozemack. “CREATE-X exemplifies how Georgia Tech empowers students with the tools, confidence, and experiences they need to transform bold ideas into real-world impact.”

Olufisayo “Fisayo” Omojokun, associate dean in the College of Computing and CREATE-X Jim Pope Fellow, submitted the program for consideration. He said the award is a reflection of the community's collective effort.

“The honor belongs to every stakeholder who has helped grow CREATE-X into the success it is today,” Omojokun said. “Having been deeply involved with the program as an instructor, Jim Pope Fellow, and Startup Launch mentor, I am simply honored to be part of that distinguished and dedicated group.”

Fisayo Omojokun, associate dean in the College of Computing and CREATE-X Jim Pope Fellow, speaking to founders at CREATE-X Startup Launch Summer 2022.

He further attributed the win to CREATE-X’s proven successes in academic innovation and commercial impact, as well as its increasing relevance in the age of AI.

Over the years, 4,350 students have gone through CREATE-X courses. And overall, it has supported the creation of over 650 startups, collectively valued at $2.4 billion.

“The metrics speak for themselves. It is rare to see a university program achieve such a profound impact in both the classroom and the marketplace,” Omojokun said. “As technology makes finding answers easier, the ability to identify the right questions becomes an increasingly critical skill. CREATE-X’s mission is to instill that entrepreneurial confidence, providing a key differentiator for the next generation.”

The ABET Innovation Award defines programs as innovative by their efforts in giving a new dimension to education in areas such as curriculum development, laboratory experiences, teaching methodologies, cross-disciplinary programs, experiential learning, and anything else designed and proven to improve a student’s educational experience.

Rahul Saxena, director of CREATE-X, spoke about the significance of the program’s holistic approach.

CREATE-X’s Associate Director for MAKE Craig Forest engages with fencing solution, Allez Go, with founders Jason Mo (left) and Adam Kulikowski (right), at Fall 2024 I2P Showcase.

“One of the things that's important right now is experiential learning for students, infusing more real-world scenarios in a safe environment, teaching them to build solutions that are designed to address the pain points, and getting them working across different disciplines before they graduate. We believe that this entrepreneurial mindset and the entrepreneurial confidence they get is a lifelong skill, regardless of whether their startup is successful,” he said.

Structured around three core pillars — LEARN, MAKE, and LAUNCH — CREATE-X offers students a comprehensive pathway from ideation to launching a startup that can be accomplished in any order, and in whatever way suits a student’s schedule best. Courses like Startup Lab, Idea to Prototype, and CREATE-X Capstone provide students with entrepreneurial education, mentorship, funding, and support for building a product. Startup Launch gives participants an avenue to accelerate product development into venture launch during the summer.

Omojokun said he saw fundamental shifts in students during his first semester with CREATE-X while co-teaching the program’s capstone with CREATE-X’s Associate Director for MAKE Craig Forest.

“Previously, I had taught traditional capstone courses where students worked on projects for third-party clients. Those courses are extremely valuable spaces for students to apply their software engineering skills, but I immediately noticed a difference in the CREATE-X environment,” Omojokun said.

Forest agreed, emphasizing the program’s focus on student-driven problem-solving.

“Students spend the first month of the course finding a real, important, and unsolved problem.  They choose it themselves and then spend the rest of the semester designing and building a solution to it,” Forest said.

“The energy, passion, and work ethic that students displayed when building a solution to a problem they had personally identified, researched, and validated was on another level. This wasn't just about applying technical skills; it was about ownership and purpose,” Omojokun said. “That contagious energy is a primary reason for my continued involvement over the past seven years, along with amazing administrators, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders who make this program possible.”

Forest also noted that CREATE-X’s approach to Capstone Design challenges traditional norms.

Students present projects during one of CREATE-X Learn’s Startup Lab sections.

“Far from being a concern for ABET accreditation, CREATE-X Capstone Design is something to be celebrated and embraced by engineering colleges and schools,” Forest said. “This is validation for all the years we've worked hard to break through barriers for Capstone Design education.”

The core of CREATE-X, Saxena said, is to teach students to define problems before they jump to solutions. Launching a startup isn’t always the measure of success, and failing fast and pivoting are encouraged. Students are pushed to talk to the people who are going to be customers, not pitch ideas about how a solution should work, or assume they know what their users want.

“Getting through and learning that process of talking to people to define problems is one of the biggest attributes of our program and curriculum,” Saxena said. “Sometimes they'll try five startup ideas before they graduate. Hextronics is a startup that did that. They graduated in 2020 and were able to immediately build up a solution that has a global impact on how autonomous drones operate. They did five different ideas before they hit something that had a huge impact. The fact that students get this experience before they graduate and not after a few years of working at a company gives them a head start to be successful out there.”

“CREATE-X has built a supportive ecosystem that has fundamentally changed entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech,” Omojokun said. “It gives students a structured space to take risks and reframe failure. Also, by providing equal access to funding, mentorship, and legal resources, it removes traditional barriers to entry. This has fostered a vibrant, cross-campus culture where students are empowered to turn their curiosity into real-world impact.”

Rahul Saxena, director of CREATE-X, speaks to Startup Launch Cohort 12 founder, Shea Kerry, in the new CREATE-X workspace in the Biltmore.

Next, CREATE-X plans to bring its methodology to other campuses, advancing its core mission so students, regardless of discipline, graduate with entrepreneurial confidence to shape their future.

“We innovated and learned a lot in 10 years. We went through a lot of experimenting with how this content is delivered. We think it can be adopted by other schools and want to find opportunities for CREATE-X and Georgia Tech to help,” Saxena said. “We're excited to see the CREATE-X methodology being adopted by universities across the country, and this award lays a great foundation for us to be a thought leader in how entrepreneurial education is delivered at scale.”

The 2025 ABET Innovation Award will be formally presented at the ABET Awards Celebration on Oct. 24 in Baltimore, Maryland.

To see the entrepreneurial spirit of CREATE-X in action, join us at this year’s Demo Day, Aug. 28, 5 p.m., where Georgia Tech student, faculty, and alumni startups showcase their solutions to real-world problems.