The projects for Tandon Honors students in the Global Leaders & Scholars in STEM program consists of a culmination of various experiences, research, and interests related to the Tandon Areas of Research Excellence. Scholars are also required to address the NAE Grand Challenges and think about the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals when doing so. At the end of the 3 years in the GLASS Program, students have a better understanding of the impact they can have on changing the world for the better. GLASS students enter the world as globally competent and socially responsible innovators and engineers!
My mission is to reimagine everyday consumer products through human-centered design, creating scalable systems that integrate sustainability, transparency, and technology to make responsible consumption intuitive and desirable.
What are you interested in and why?
I am interested in designing innovative, human-centered solutions that make sustainability practical, intuitive, and desirable for everyday consumers. I am particularly drawn to problems where there is a gap between awareness and action, and where better design can bridge that gap. I believe sustainability should not feel like a trade-off, but instead be seamlessly integrated into how people already live and consume.
What is being done and what is a broad summary of what you did?
My work focuses on reimagining the future of beauty packaging by combining engineering, circular economy principles, and consumer-centered design. Through my project, ÉcoBelle, I developed a smart, modular, refillable packaging system that reduces single-use waste while improving product safety and transparency. The system integrates reusable components with features such as expiry tracking and scannable product information, creating a more informed and sustainable user experience.
What is on the horizon for this in the future?
In the future, I hope to expand this approach beyond beauty into a broader ecosystem of consumer products, developing scalable systems that align sustainability, technology, and design. My goal is to create solutions where responsible consumption becomes intuitive, and where innovation can drive both environmental impact and long-term value for consumers and businesses.
Which Areas of Research Excellence does your mission statement relate to?
Choose at least two areas of excellence and include the title and overview sentence
Summarize how they relate to your mission statement
1. Industrial, Urban & Environmental Sustainability
This area examines how engineered solutions can reduce waste, conserve resources, and support long-term environmental health. ÉcoBelle aligns with this by addressing the large-scale issue of cosmetic packaging waste through a refillable, modular system that reduces reliance on single-use plastics. The project supports circular economy principles by encouraging reuse, extending product lifecycles, and minimizing environmental impact.
2. Engineering & Culture
This area explores how engineering interacts with society, consumer behavior, and cultural trends. ÉcoBelle sits at the intersection of technology, design, and user experience, showing how tools like QR-enabled expiry tracking and product transparency can reshape how consumers engage with beauty products. By combining sustainability with premium design, the project demonstrates how engineering innovation and cultural preferences can work together to shift everyday consumer behavior.
Connection to Mission
Together, these areas reflect my mission of creating sustainable, user-centered innovations that are not only functional, but also intuitive, culturally relevant, and commercially viable.
Which United Nations Sustainability Development Goals or NAE Grand Challenges does your mission statement connect to?
United Nations SDG 12 — Responsible Consumption & Production
This goal focuses on reducing waste, improving resource efficiency, and promoting more sustainable production and consumption systems. ÉcoBelle supports SDG 12 by replacing single-use cosmetic packaging with a modular, refillable system that encourages reuse and reduces long-term environmental impact.
United Nations SDG 3 — Good Health & Well-Being
This goal aims to ensure access to safe products and support healthier lives. ÉcoBelle connects to SDG 3 by improving product safety awareness through expiry tracking, ingredient transparency, and accessible education, enabling consumers to make more informed and responsible choices.
This paper explores how the beauty industry’s reliance on single-use packaging and limited consumer education around product safety have created both environmental and trust challenges. Today, over 120 billion units of cosmetic packaging are produced annually, much of which is discarded after one use, while consumers often remain uncertain about product expiration, ingredient stability, and safe usage.
To address these issues, this paper proposes ÉcoBelle, a modular and refillable cosmetic packaging system designed to embed sustainability, transparency, and safety into everyday beauty routines. The system combines reusable outer containers with standardized refill pods and integrates simple smart features, such as expiry tracking and QR-based product information, to help users better understand what they are using and when to replace it.
Beyond physical packaging, ÉcoBelle extends into a brand-integrated digital platform that enables products across different beauty brands to become scannable and trackable within one unified system, allowing consumers to monitor product usage, expiration timelines, and ingredient information in a centralized and accessible way while improving both convenience and trust.
Through analysis of consumer behavior, existing refill systems, and industry trends, the paper identifies key gaps in current solutions, particularly around usability, affordability, and transparency, positioning ÉcoBelle as an accessible-premium alternative that maintains a high-quality aesthetic while lowering long-term costs through reusable design and recurring refills and aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being).
Over the past three years in GLASS, I’ve become increasingly interested in how sustainability challenges are often not driven by a lack of awareness, but by a lack of accessible and well-designed solutions. Exploring the global challenge of cosmetic packaging waste helped me realize that consumer behavior is deeply shaped by convenience, pricing, and trust, not just intention. It also pushed me to think more critically about planned obsolescence and how many products are intentionally designed for short lifespans, shifting environmental and social costs elsewhere. This project reflects my focus on designing systems that align sustainability with real user habits, showing how more durable, transparent, and accountable design can make responsible consumption intuitive and scalable.