About

Sita Syal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. She holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, earned in 2022, along with a Master of Science in Product Design Engineering from Stanford University in 2020, a Master of Engineering in Energy Systems Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2014, and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2013. Her research interests include energy justice and equity, sustainable energy and mobility systems, human-centered design methods, design needfinding, socially-engaged design, community engagement, optimization, cost modeling, agent-based modeling, uncertainty quantification, multi-attribute decision making, and energy policy. Her work focuses on integrating justice into engineering design, sustainable energy solutions, and mobility systems, contributing to the advancement of socially responsible engineering practices.

Research topics

• Business
• Environmental economics
• Computer science
• Engineering ethics
• Sociology

Selected publications

• Bringing Justice to Design: How Researchers and Practitioners View and Incorporate Justice Into Design

  2025-08-17

  article

  Abstract A growing research area in mechanical engineering examines the ways in which social justice is, and should be, an aspect of engineering design research and application. Engineering has a major impact in all of our lives and thus it is important to consider how the engineering design discipline can better account for, and practice, justice. The research question central to this study is: how are researchers and practitioners in the Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) community discussing and integrating justice in their design research and applications? In this study, we conducted a special session on design justice at the 2024 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences to gather perspectives on how academics and practitioners in the DTM community are integrating justice into engineering design. The qualitative analysis of participant responses revealed insights in defining design justice, integrating justice into design research and practice, highlighting opportunities and challenges in integrating justice into design, and conducting future work needed in design justice. Key points revealed how researchers and practitioners currently balance and leverage power dynamics, develop educational materials related to design justice, and center community experience. Researchers and practitioners alike expressed desire to build further bridges between research and practice to move the field of design justice forward.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction to the Minitrack on Design Justice and Values in Design

  ScholarSpace (University of Hawaii at Manoa) · 2025-12-23

  article
  Publisher

• Designing Complex Socio-Technical Systems for Participation: Community Engagement in Utility-Scale Solar

  2025-08-17

  articleSenior author

  Abstract Utility-scale solar projects—large solar energy systems typically connected to the electric grid—are central to decarbonization efforts in the United States. Yet their development is shaped by complex socio-technical systems involving diverse stakeholders, regulatory frameworks, and evolving community expectations. This study investigates how developers navigate decision-making and stakeholder engagement in this landscape. Through semi-structured interviews with five solar developers, we identified key decision points, interaction patterns, and barriers to incorporating community perspectives. Findings reveal a fragmented community landscape, with landowners and local officials as primary decision-makers, neighbors (residents living near proposed project sites) as emerging stakeholders, and the broader public engaged largely through regulatory hearings. Developers often balance transparency with caution, adopting limited engagement strategies to manage risk and public opposition. These dynamics highlight opportunities for integrating design-driven approaches that reframe community engagement not as a compliance activity but as a central part of infrastructure design. This paper contributes to design theory by examining how utility-scale energy developers engage with fragmented community stakeholders, and by identifying opportunities for applying participatory design principles to support more responsive and context-sensitive socio-technical system development.

  PublisherDOI

• Insights and implications from a sociotechnical case study approach in sustainability education

  International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education · 2025-04-11 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Purpose This study aims to investigate the use of a sociotechnical case study as a means of integrating social and technical dimensions into an undergraduate engineering sustainability technical elective course. Design/methodology/approach The “Big Wind Project” case study used a microhistory approach to engage students in the complexities of sustainable engineering, aiming to facilitate their exploration of the sociotechnical nature of engineering sustainability projects. Focused on a controversial wind energy project in Hawaii, the Big Wind Project case study served as a pedagogical tool in the course for engaging engineering students in complex sustainability challenges. Findings Thirty-nine students who engaged in the case study lesson responded to questions about their perceptions of the case and the role of stakeholders and other social dimensions in engineering decision-making and agreed that we could use their responses in this research. While many students acknowledged the importance of accounting for social dimensions, their discussions frequently reflected a persistent tendency of engineering work to view outcomes through a dualistic technical-vs-social lens rather than an integrated sociotechnical lens. Originality/value This study examined how a case study reveals and supports students’ navigation of the complexities of sociotechnical engineering sustainability work.

  PublisherDOI

• Inclusive community selection for engagement in clean transportation initiatives: A multifaceted approach and case study

  Journal of Cleaner Production · 2024-08-17

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Community engagement is a critical step to developing clean, equitable transportation systems in the transition to a decarbonized transport sector. Understanding the needs of the people who will use and be affected by new transportation infrastructure and services can help inform the fair distribution of potential burdens and benefits. A diverse set of communities must be selected for engagement to ensure multiple perspectives are considered. There is a need for consistent processes to systematically ensure community selection is inclusive. Important community groups have been left out of engagement, leading to biases in the findings from engagement efforts and ultimately, contributing to the inequitable transportation system we see today. There is a need for careful efforts up-front to identify and elevate the voices of those who have been and continue to be underrepresented in engagement processes. In this paper, we present a multifaceted approach for the selection of communities for engagement in transportation programs and policies. The approach consists of three integrated components: building problem context, analyzing data, and understanding community dynamics. We discuss each component and the iterations between them and apply the approach to a case study in Sonoma County, California, focused on the equitable transition to electric vehicles. Conducting this approach as a dedicated workstream in Sonoma County resulted in a diverse set of communities for future engagement efforts. This approach offers a shift in the way engagement efforts are conducted to prioritize diverse perspectives and ultimately, equitable transportation systems.

  PublisherDOI

• Design and Justice: A Scoping Review in Engineering Design

  Journal of Mechanical Design · 2024-10-14 · 6 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Our society faces complex social justice challenges, often exacerbated by existing engineered products and technologies. To avoid unintentionally contributing to social injustice, engineering designers play a critical role in creating and studying products and technologies that can aim to address the challenges of social injustice. There is a growing priority in the engineering design research community to incorporate justice into design and to do so meaningfully and intentionally. Therefore, there is a need to more deeply understand how scholars have integrated concepts of justice into design and to bring to light areas of future research. In this article, we conduct a scoping review of design and justice in twelve scholarly venues relevant to the engineering design community. A scoping review allowed for a broad range of topics to be covered to identify major research themes and gaps and to explore the boundaries of the nascent study of design and justice. After searching the relevant venues, we conducted a thematic analysis to capture the major themes in the dataset of papers relating to justice and design. Along with relevant terminology used, we found that scholars connected justice to design in ways that we categorized into three main areas of design: designers, design outcomes, and design processes. Our analysis highlighted areas of future research in studying justice as relevant to designers, outcomes, and processes, as well as identifying an overall call to redefine the field of design in the pursuit of justice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Unpacking travel needs and experiences: Insights from qualitative interviews with affordable housing residents in California

  Energy Research & Social Science · 2024-09-17 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  As states like California move to decarbonize and invest in clean mobility, understanding how the evolving transportation landscape affects travel behavior becomes crucial. This transition to decarbonization presents an opportunity to create a more just energy system, benefiting underserved and historically marginalized communities. This study explored how a limited-income community in Sonoma County, California uses personal transportation to address their travel needs. Through qualitative interviews at two affordable housing complexes, we uncovered residents' experiences with transportation and factors influencing their travel choices. Our findings showed that participants navigated a complex, interconnected transportation system, comprising five critical subsystems: transportation options , infrastructure , availability , financing , and rules and norms . Each subsystem was characterized by distinct points of interaction, reflecting the multifaceted experiences of users. Individual circumstances, such as interactions with the criminal justice system and familial responsibilities, profoundly shaped participants' transportation choices. Participants prioritized factors such as cost-effectiveness, safety, convenience, and reliability, but their decisions were also influenced by their specific needs and contexts, including the need for point-to-point travel, family alignment, and familiarity considerations. In this work, we uncovered the social dimensions of personal transportation choices, which can help transportation planners and engineers better integrate a sociotechnical perspective when designing future transportation systems. By understanding the diverse needs of communities and applying a sociotechnical systems perspective, policymakers can work toward a more equitable and decarbonized transportation future, ensuring access regardless of personal circumstances and individual travel needs.

  PublisherDOI

• The EV transition isn’t just about cars – the broader goal should be access to clean mobility for everyone

  2023-02-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Assessing justice in California’s transition to electric vehicles

  iScience · 2023-05-11 · 29 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Passenger vehicles are an essential form of transportation and contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and criteria air pollution. The health and climate effects associated with their use disproportionately impact low-income communities and people of color. A shift from conventional vehicles to zero-emission vehicles is essential to meet climate targets and reduce inequities. The transition to clean transportation is an opportunity to uplift underserved and marginalized communities while building a sustainable transportation system. We assess justice in California's transition to electric passenger vehicles by analyzing publicly available data on electric vehicle adoption and rebate use to measure justice in three areas: distribution of electric vehicles, allocation of state incentives, and the social and historical context of redlining. We find electric vehicle adoption and rebate use are lower in low-income and Latino-majority ZIP codes and in formerly redlined neighborhoods, indicating that California's electric vehicle transition has not been just thus far.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Design and Justice: A Scoping Review in Engineering Design

  2023-08-20 · 1 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Our society faces complex social justice challenges, often exacerbated by existing engineered products and technologies. Engineering designers play a critical role in creating and studying products and technologies that can both aim to solve and unintentionally contribute to social injustice. There is a growing priority in the engineering design research community to incorporate justice into design work and to do so meaningfully and intentionally. Therefore, there is a need to more deeply understand how scholars have integrated concepts of justice into their design work and to bring to light areas of future research. In this paper, we conduct a scoping review of design and justice in eleven scholarly venues relevant to the engineering design community. A scoping review allowed for a broad range of topics to be covered to identify major research themes and gaps, and to explore boundaries of the nascent study of design and justice. After searching the relevant venues, we conducted a thematic analysis to capture the major themes in the dataset of papers relating to justice and design. We found that scholars connected justice to their design work in ways that can be categorized into three main areas of design: Designers, Design Outcomes, and Design Process. Our analysis highlighted areas of future research in studying justice as relevant to Designers, Outcomes, and Processes, as well as identifying an overall call to redefine design as a whole in the pursuit of justice.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Julia Kramer

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  5 shared

• Erin F. MacDonald

  Stanford University

  4 shared

• Karen Eggerman

  Coral Reef Alliance

  2 shared

• Yiqing Ding

  APT Therapeutics (United States)

  2 shared

• Uthman Olagoke

  Design Science (United States)

  2 shared

• Eleanor M. Hennessy

  Arizona State University

  2 shared

• Margot Gerritsen

  Stanford University

  2 shared

• E. Escalante Carrillo

  Community Living

  1 shared

Education

• PhD, Mechanical Engineering

  Stanford University

  2022

• MS, Product Design Engineering ("Design Impact"), Mechanical Engineering

  Stanford University

  2020