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Teaching Faculty members Joe Krachey and Mark Allie watch a team demonstration
December 19, 2024

Collaborative Innovation: ECE Capstone Projects Impress Alumni and Guests

Written By: Allyson Crowley

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On December 10, 2024, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Capstone Design Open House brought creativity and innovation to life as 15 student teams showcased their final capstone design projects to peers, faculty, alumni, and community members. Throughout the semester, team members collaborated to design and build projects of their own invention. The projects on display demonstrated exceptional technical expertise and ingenuity, reflecting the learned skills, and dedication of the student teams. Projects ranged from an automated pet monitoring system, to a puzzle-based alarm clock, to a keyword-based chatbot that responds to user input with a text reply and short audio snippet.

Student teams from three ECE senior design courses presented their work:

  • ECE 453 – Embedded Microprocessor System Design
  • ECE 454 – Mobile Computing Laboratory
  • ECE 554 – Digital Engineering Laboratory

ECE Associate Professor Joshua San Miguel, instructor for ECE 454, shared his thoughts on the event, “The Capstone Open House was a great opportunity to recognize the students’ hard work and show them all the support from the faculty, alumni and peers. It’s great to see how excited the students were – not just in their technical achievements, but in the community and societal impact of their projects.” San Miguel also talked about his students’ approach to their projects, saying, “Throughout the semester, there weren’t just questions of ‘how do we implement this’ but also ‘how would people truly benefit from this’. To me, that’s what a capstone design project is all about.”

ECE alumni, faculty, and Open House guests were invited to judge the teams as they competed for three types of awards: Best Overall Project, decided by ECE alumni judges; Best Project by Class, decided by instructors; and Best Overall Project, decided by attendees of the event.

ECE Alumni Judge Phil Nwafor and others listen to team members present a project
ECE Alumni Judge Phil Nwafor (second from left) listens to team JJK from ECE 454 present their project, HeartbeatX, which is an app for heartrate monitoring that is integrated with smartwatches.

Phil Nwafor (BSEE’03), Head of HCLS GTM at Google Cloud, served as a guest alumni judge, “As a judge, I was incredibly impressed by the innovation and creativity demonstrated by the ECE students in their Capstone projects. The final designs were not only technically sound but also showed a deep understanding of the challenges they were addressing. It was clear that these students had put in a tremendous amount of effort, and their passion for their work was evident.  Hearing about the design journey – the ‘whys’ and more – was remarkable.”

A full panel of ECE alumni judges, including Nwafor, brought diverse industry expertise to the task:

  • Cole Burek (BSEE’18), Embedded Hardware Engineer – Extreme Engineering Solutions
  • Marwan Estiban (BSEE’91), Director of Engineering, Electronics and Smart Tech – Kohler Company
  • Patrick Flannery (MSEE’03, PhDEE’08), Director of Research Engineering – AMSC
  • Joseph Fourness (BSEE’99), Architect – Financial Technologies, Inc.
  • Kenton Smith (BSCMPE’14), Senior Embedded Engineer – Extreme Engineering Solutions
Alumni Judge Marwan Estiban talks with a student team about their project
Alumni Judge Marwan Estiban (right) talks with a team from ECE 454 about their project GoNeighbor, an app connecting nearby students for help with everyday tasks

This event, first launched in May 2024, is planned to be held at the end of each fall and spring semester and highlights not only the innovative spirit of ECE students but also the collaborative support of our alumni and faculty. Alumni judge Marwan Estiban observed, “The students demonstrated excellent command of the subject matter and a passion for their work. These ‘kids’ are ready for the real world. These future leaders make me very optimistic about the future.”

Are you an ECE alum interested in serving as a judge for future Capstone Design Open House events or engaging with our students and fellow alumni in other ways? Please fill out our UW-ECE Alumni Engagement Form.

Professor Azadeh Davoodi tests student project while other students look on.
ECE 554 instructor Professor Azadeh Davoodi tests out a project by team The High Fives who created a five-stage pipelined RISC-V processor with two co-processors for a game in which players move a cursor on the screen that is controlled by hand through camera input to a location specified by the game, in time with music
Smiling students watch remote-controlled drone demonstration
Members of team Badger Brigade demonstrate the remote-controlled drone they created in ECE 453.
Cole Burek talks with an ECE student.
Alumni Judge Cole Burek (left) talks with Sumanth Karnati, a member of team Project X. The team created an app for AI-automated time management and scheduling for students.
Rusheel Dasari, Lucas Myszkowski, Shreya Mukherjee, Susan Hagness
Best Project Award – ECE Alumni Decision: The High Fives – Rusheel Dasari, Lucas Myszkowski, and Shreya Mukherjee with Susan Hagness
Not pictured: Joe Clauson and Brian Zhang
Sarah Gerovac, Bowen Quan, and James Vollmer with Susan Hagness
Best ECE 453 Project Award – ECE Instructors’ Decision: Team Bucky Cart – Sarah Gerovac, Bowen Quan, and James Vollmer with Susan Hagness
Not pictured: Ameera Jaber
The project was a simulator inspired by the Nintendo game Mario Kart.
Ian Barbour, Nicholas Spaid, Annika Olson, Sebastien Criqui, Susan Hagness
Best ECE 554 Project Award – ECE Instructors’ Decision: Team ChatbOoOt – Ian Barbour, Nicholas Spaid, Annika Olson, and Sebastien Criqui with Susan Hagness
Not pictured: Abhipriya Bansal and Jason Sinaga
The project was a keyword-based chatbot that responds to user input with text reply and short audio clip and runs out intricate out-of-order (OoO) processor architecture.
Sumanth Karnati, Ayush Jadhav, Joseph Tao, Rajit Bhargav Mahesh with Susan Hagness
Best ECE 454 Project Award – ECE Instructors’ Decision: Team Project X – Sumanth Karnati, Ayush Jadhav, Joseph Tao, Rajit Bhargav Mahesh with Susan Hagness
Keeton Kowalski, Harshith Kantamneni, Kyle Stephenson, Myranda Bischoff, Susan Hagness
Best Project Award – People’s Choice: Team #StealingYourData – Keeton Kowalski, Harshith Kantamneni, Kyle Stephenson and Myranda Bischoff with Susan Hagness
The team created a home monitoring system.

Photo at top of page: ECE 453 instructor Teaching Faculty Joe Krachey (right with red shirt) and Teaching Faculty Mark Allie (second from right, white shirt) look closely as team #StealingYourData member Myranda Bischoff (center, blue sweater) demonstrates their project.