CS Seniors’ Capstone Projects Feature Cutting-Edge Innovations and Solutions for Top-Tier Companies
Every semester, UT Dallas Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE) seniors come together one final time before graduation to present their final capstone project at the biannual UTDesign Computer Science Expo. This May, 25 teams ranging from three to five members each presented their final projects to a room full of their peers, UT Dallas faculty members, and industry professionals.
The final capstone projects created by CS/SE students range from saving corporations time and money, to mobile healthcare apps such as automated, image based user checkups for skin cancers, to medical software apps that allow HIPAA compliant mobile instant messaging for providers in clinical settings, and even to a dating app that promotes a safe dating culture for those who are HIV positive. Other projects utilized virtual reality in their final project, including a visualization platform that simulated Citi Group’s data centers that would allow engineers to have the ability to explore and monitor their centers or participate in training simulations without requiring a physical presence.
In order to graduate, all students in the UT Dallas Computer Science bachelor’s program are required to complete a one-semester, team-oriented capstone project. The final projects allow students to apply the knowledge that they have gained through their education at the UT Dallas Computer Science department.
The teams and projects are sponsored by both large-scale companies and UT Dallas faculty member’s research labs and are judged at the end of the semester at the UTDesign Expo. UTDesign helps businesses expand their resources by leveraging the skills, energy, and fervor of talented computer science and engineering students. Companies who work with students in the UTDesign program benefit from the knowledge gained from the students who are currently being taught the latest in cutting-edge innovations in their field within the UT Dallas CS program.
Companies are not the only ones who benefit from the program, as students working on the projects are eager to find solutions for sponsoring companies’ projects by offering innovative ideas, forward-thinking approaches to solving problems, and bold and creative solutions. Through the program, students can expect to learn and test important technical skills and gain valuable experience that often can lead to internships and jobs.
Among the corporate sponsors in this year’s spring expo were Aprima Medical Software, Atos, Citi, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, HRPower, JLL Consulting Services, Raytheon, Rockwell Collins, SeroMatch, Tech Mahindra, Texas Instruments, TNT Dental, Tyler Technologies, and UT Dallas. Many of these companies have used the code that students developed and have put it into production within the company. The capstone project course is taught by Dr. Miguel Razo, who is also the CS UTDesign program director.
On the day of the expo, each team was allowed to use only one slide to present their work. Brevity was critical in covering the goal of the project, design of the project, project testing, validation plan, results achieved, project management approach, and acknowledgment of sponsors – all within their allotted five minutes. Projects were judged by the quality of technical content within the presentation – problem description, design approach, and implementation, oral and visual presentation skills including effective use of 5 minutes to present, understand/explain the social impact of the project, ability to explain the process followed for the project with support from related documentation, and the quality of technical content in the poster.
Dr. Ivor Page, UT Dallas CS Professor, Founding Director of the CS UTDesign program, CS2 program director, and this year’s expo master of ceremonies, had this to say about the program before announcing this year’s winners, “Let me just say, we are all so pleased with all the projects we have seen today. Each semester I am just blown away at the work our students are doing. I think UTDesign has been such a successful endeavor in having students get real on-the-job experience with industry mentorship, by having them work on live projects that are of value to companies.”
Below is a brief description of this year’s top three winning teams:
First Place: AlgoDerm – Geometric and Biomedical Computing Lab at UT Dallas – This team of students created a mobile app that allows the user to snap a picture of the affected skin area and receive a recommendation of possible disease (e.g., melanoma), including suggestions for follow up with qualified dermatologists. The app stores the images of the same area in a time indexed sequence that can be used to assess changes over time. Dr. Ovidiu Daescu, UT Dallas CS Professor, served as the team’s faculty mentor.
Second Place: PiRemote – JLL Consulting Services – For this project, the team’s goal was to control devices connected to a Raspberry Pi, such as an irrigation system. JLL Consulting Services served as the team’s corporate sponsor.
Third Place: Odyssey Online Juror Response – Tyler Technologies– This team of students created a web-based application that provides a streamlined processing experience for jurors. Through their project, the juror can access the application via both desktop and a mobile device. Tyler Technologies served as the team’s corporate sponsor.
Below is a complete list of the Spring 2017 CS UTDesign Senior Capstone Projects.
| Project Title | Team Members |
|---|---|
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise – Data Mining Customer Configurations | Germaine Farr, Hameed Hakimi, Ewen MacGregor, Mohamed Mohamed, Cameron O’Brien |
| TNT Dental – Mamba – Lead Generation for Emergency Dental | Chi-Kan Cheung, Trent Davies, Abhishek Dendukuri, Richard Ho, Jacob Walsh |
| Tech Mahindra – Cognitive Brain Function Mapped Onto a Silicon Chip | Arwa Ahmed, Quratulain Memon, Krithika Rajendran, Rosario Rojas, Raman Sathiapalan |
| Citi – Exploring Citi’s Data Centers Through Virtual Reality | Alexander Aitken, Kia Khadem, April Nguyen, Baoan Nguyen, Karan Shukla |
| Raytheon – DisconNet | Michael Abuda, Scott Prasse, Senay Sahle, Randi Sanchez, Matthew Valencia |
| Rockwell Collins – Missionized VIP Cabin – Voice Switch GUI | Steven Bui, Aditya Gheewala, Rithvik Gottumukkala, Nagaraju Kamarapu, Guowen Luo |
| Atos – Tableau Voice User Interface | Justin Brewer, Karan Kaul, Schicheng Liang, Mahder Negash, Sairahul Saripella |
| Atos – Virtual Reality Interactions for Tableau | Tomer Braff, Caleb Devany, Nam Dinh, Brendan Honea, Julian McNichols |
| Atos – SmartTag – ArchestrA Data Entry Automation | Andrew Gonzales, Keenen Juengerman, Dongyeop Lee, Andrew Lo, Zachary Sullivan |
| Tyler Technologies – Odyssey – Online Juror Response | Kiarra Dean, Marcus Karl, Sara Melnick, Andrew Robinson |
| Tyler Technologies – Odyssey Developer Forecast Dashboard | Winston Carlile, Carmen Chan, Tyler Davis, Pablo Flores, Braden Howell |
| SeroMatch – Promoting a Safe Dating Culture | John Cerreta, Stephen Chang, Steven Krone, Josue Loeza, Jason Rummel, Daniel Nguyen, Christopher Pham, Tran Pham, Justin Westerman, Michael Willis |
| Aprima Medical Software – Patient Portal Theme Generator | Benjamin Cao, Vuong Pham, Brent Vadla, Philip Wang |
| Aprima Medical Software – Mobile Instant Messaging For Providers in a Clinical Setting | Subham Keshri, Tasnim Khan, Haider Molla, Subayyal Mustafvi |
| Texas Instruments (TI) – Holodeck – CapTIvate Your Augmented Reality | Nikoli Cartagena, Garrett Haney, Steven Hogue, Nathan Morrison, Zachary Richied |
| UTD Center for Robust Speech Systems (CRSS)– Exploreapollo.org – The Heroes Behind the Heroes | Ti Chen, Tyler Hagen, Patrick Schmidt, Satsuki Ueno |
| UTD Geometric and Biomedical Computing Lab (GBCL) – NutriScope | Zhihui Huang, Kenneth Hurh, Brian Odong, John Popplewell, Roya Rouhi |
| UTD Geometric and Biomedical Computing Lab (GBCL) – AlgoDerm | Adityaa Michael Arivazhagan, Craig Bailey, Lindsey Davis, Jai Ghanekar, Ashwini Suresh |
| Student Project – UTDQueue | Brandon Ngo, Hoa Nguyen, Daniel Pacheco, Ahmad Tabbakha |
| Student Project – UTD Attendance System | Ulysses Collins, Daniel Hays, Vishal Paruchuri, Carter Taylor, Cristian Ventura |
| Student Project – Transparency Layer – Enhanced Database Caching | Eric Dilmore, Caleb Holloway, David Smith, Blake Tarlton |
| HRPower.com – HRPower – Streamlining HR | Riley Chastain, Daniel Eisterhold, Elijah Lopez, Royce Mathews, Veselin Vankov |
| JLL Consulting – PiRemote | Victor Anyirah, Bryan Gillespie, Muhammad Martinez, Jeffrey Parsa, Matthew Willoughby |
| Student Project – In Good Form | Michael Aldridge, Dino Occhialini, Matthew Wynn |
| OpNeAR – PROnet | Theodore Basallaje, Michael Burdick, Vinh Le, Mark Lohstroh, Nicholas Powell |
Click here to view all the photos from this year’s Spring 2017 UTDesign CS Expo.
ABOUT THE UT DALLAS COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
The UT Dallas Computer Science program is one of the largest Computer Science departments in the United States with over 2,100 bachelor’s degree students, more than 1,000 MS master’s students, 150 Ph.D. students, and 86 faculty members, as of Fall 2016. With The University of Texas at Dallas’ unique history of starting as a graduate institution first, the CS Department is built on a legacy of valuing innovative research and providing advanced training for software engineers and computer scientists.