Software Engineering Senior Project Awards showcase student creativity and impact

The department of software engineering recently held its annual Senior Project Excellence and Creativity Awards, honoring two student teams that exhibited impactful, innovative, and creative projects. The Excellence Award recognizes superior project planning, execution, and resulting product, while the Creativity Award celebrates original thinking in both the team's artifacts and final deliverable. 

Cancer Connect - Adolescent or Young Adult Cancer CARE App | Excellence Award winner

• Students: Joe Baillie, Jade Condez, Will Hoover, Erik Langdon Potts, Chase Elliott 
• Sponsor: Lauren Spiker, executive director, 13thirty Cancer Connect, Inc.
• Faculty Coach: Parul Patel, adjunct faculty

The 13thirty CARE App is a web application designed for adolescents and young adults (AYAs) who have fought or are currently fighting cancer. The goal of the app is to connect AYAs to service providers, both in and out of healthcare, that have provided solid service and undergone 13thirty’s specialized training. The application exists in three parts: a forum for AYAs to connect to each other and discuss shared experiences, a learning tool for service providers to get certified by 13thirty, and a searching tool for AYAs to find service providers based on the services they provide. Providers are rated by users, and other users are able to view these ratings in order to make informed decisions about the services they use.

“Our project forms the foundation of a product that will greatly benefit young people with cancer, and I’m proud we achieved the excellence it deserves,” says Will Hoover.

BAE Systems – Natural Disaster Dog Rescue | Creativity Award winner

• Students: Mason Bausenwein, Dan Corcoran, Aiden Kennedy, Kevin Sakowicz
• Sponsor: Daniel Wallach, BAE Systems Inc. 
• Faculty Coach: Samuel Malachowsky, principal lecturer

In the aftermath of a natural disaster, search and rescue attempts can be disorganized and dangerous. This project aims to help alleviate the danger and aid in a smooth recovery. Utilizing autonomous drones, computer vision, and augmented reality, it enables rescuers to automatically detect lost and abandoned dogs and relay this information to offsite teams for appropriate action. An onsite team deploys a set of autonomous drones with a preprogrammed flight plan. These drones then actively monitor the search area, sending data back to the onsite team. This data is then displayed as an augmented reality (AR) sand table view for both onsite and offsite users. Detections of stray or abandoned dogs are made automatically and integrated into the sand table view.
 

“For me, this project was an amazing experience, almost entirely due to my teammates Mason, Aiden, and Kevin,” reflects Dan Corcoran, whose team won the Creativity Award. “I've never worked with a school group that was that efficient, got along as well as we did, and worked as hard as they did. None of us cared about the grade. We just wanted to have the most standout demo possible by the end of the project.”

Senior Project Overview:

Senior project proposals are submitted yearly by nonprofits, research groups, and companies for consideration by the department of software engineering. Participation in these projects is required for graduation and represents the culmination of all the students have learned throughout their academic careers. The annual ceremony to recognize the students’ work was created during the 2022 - 2023 academic year as part of the department’s 25th anniversary celebration.

Students fill out a preference survey at the start of the year, and teams are formed based on interest in the selected projects. Each team member is required to attend weekly meetings with their project sponsors and faculty coaches, participate in the entire engineering process, create and update project artifacts such as technical reports and presentations, and work together to address customer demands.

At the end of the year, each team presents their project at a large event which includes software engineering faculty, alumni, and the department’s Industrial Advisory Board. The projects are then evaluated and judged by a panel of College of Computing alumni prior to graduation.

Get Involved:

Visit https://seniorproject.se.rit.edu to view past senior projects and to submit a project proposal.

For more information on sponsoring a senior project, contact Samuel Malachowsky.