Sponsors Provide Welcome Support to SoE Capstone Senior Design Projects
For School of Engineering (SoE) students, a required capstone senior design project is the culmination of their undergraduate career – and a solid preparation for the realities of today’s workplace. In addition to guidance and support from faculty, senior design also brings together students, industrial partners, and alumni in a collaborative research environment.
This academic year, SoE received funding support for senior design from industry partners including L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, the American Society of Naval Engineers, and General Dynamics Corporation, among others, as well as from alumni funders such as the Paul and Jenna Segal Family Foundation Renewable Energy Initiatives Fund established by Paul Segal ENG’97, along with alumni who served as mentors and judges. Funding enables student teams to purchase crucial supplies and materials needed to realize their projects. Funding also provides cash prizes for winning teams.
“Our School of Engineering students gain invaluable hands-on experience by applying what they have learned in the classroom and in labs to identify challenges and devise solutions to real-world problems in their capstone senior design projects,” says School of Engineering Dean Alberto Cuitiño. “We are extremely grateful for the funding and mentoring support our departments receive from industry and alumni in order to fully support our students.”
In each of this year’s senior design projects, creativity, collaboration, and engineering aptitude were readily on display.
A Win-Win for Students
Students receive guidance and mentoring from faculty and industry professionals, for the duration of projects involving a single discipline or several areas of engineering. While drawing on their pool of knowledge, students are mindful to apply industry standards in terms of economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability to their project designs.
At this spring’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Capstone Expo, 53 teams presented innovative prototypes, that ran the gamut from a smart pill box that promotes medication adherence and a self-adjusting rearview mirror powered by computer vision and mechatronics that helps to eliminate blind spots to a “WhisperBot” robot able to navigate its surroundings via physical contact rather than by relying on LIDAR or cameras.
Industrial and Systems Engineering students start working on their Senior Design Projects during the spring of their junior year and present their projects in December. “These projects give our students an opportunity to bring all that they have learned to bear on a culminating team project,” says Mohsen Jafari, professor and ISE department chair. “This year’s projects really captured the inherent flexibility of the field.”
Inspired by a shared appreciation of music, one team worked closely with Julia Baumanis, the associate director of university bands and an assistant conducting professor at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts, to develop U-Conduct – a tool to support proper orchestral conducting technique by helping students perform gestures correctly and in time.
A host of innovations were showcased by 42 teams at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering’s Design and Manufacturing Expo. Projects included a surfboard propulsion unit to help novice surfers catch their first wave by giving them a boost of speed by pulling a lever. The project was also an entry in the American Society of Naval Engineers’ annual Promoting Electric Propulsion competition.
On LinkedIn, senior Matthew Cadillac reported how his group officially chartered a new Rutgers club, the Rutgers Promoting Electric Propulsion Organization, where students can “explore and gain hands-on experience with naval, mechanical, and electrical engineering in a competitive setting.”
Most significantly, for Cadillac – as it is for so many SoE seniors – his capstone design project was “an unforgettable experience and a powerful reminder of what collaboration, late nights, and a shared vision can achieve.”
A Win-Win for Senior Design Project Sponsors
Senior Design Capstone Project industry and alumni sponsors realize a rewarding array of benefits while gaining the satisfaction of contributing to the education of workforce-ready engineers by nurturing and supporting their hands-on learning experiences. Each sponsorship is a unique opportunity to interact with potential hires, expert faculty, and world-class research.
In many instances, sponsors can also benefit from cost-effective work on projects that they propose and mentor. They gain access, through students, to university resources from libraries to computing facilities and more.
Learn how to sponsor a Senior Design Capstone Project, cutting-edge research, and innovation.
2025 Departmental Senior Design Projects
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
