Computer Engineering Capstone Projects
All students in the Computer Engineering Department participate in a year-long capstone sequence in their senior year. The senior design project is a culminating experience that requires students to use all of their acquired knowledge toward the design, implementation, testing, and documentation of a product. The resulting document serves as the student’s undergraduate thesis, and discusses not only the project and the experience, but also addresses the societal, ethical, and environmental impacts of the work. Students present their work at the annual Senior Design Conference, held each year in May, to a panel of alumni and industry judges.
2012–2013
- Dewey: Social Media for Social Good
Sophia Boettcher (CS)
Advisors: A. Amer, N. Ling
Dewey is a a social mobile app designed to (1) increase transparency of charities to the public, and (2) incentivise being a good samaritan within communities. Users are encouraged to post local causes in order to draw awareness, donations, volunteers, etc. Points are awarded for participation in meaningful ways.
- Eventify
Bryson Lam, Jeff Matsunaga, Matt Tu
Advisor: J. Holliday
An event-planning app for Android phones.
- Kosmos: A Virtual 3-D Universe
John Judnich
Advisor: N. Ling
Kosmos is an interactive game and simulation presenting a vast, high-resolution, virtual 3-D universe. In addition to implementing state-of-the-art 3D graphics technology, we introduce several new cutting-edge algorithms invented for Kosmos (including efficiency improvements two to four times faster than previous approaches).
- Mobile Forum for Education
Suzanne Lien, Alexandria Shearer
Advisor: S. Figueira
A mobile application for youth in emerging markets that allows a central party to distribute educational information.
- MUVE
Elysia Chu, Victoria Hall, Maya Hough, Urvashi Reddy
Advisor: S. Figueira
MUVE strives to promote education and provide jobs in partnership with Anudip, a non-profit foundation that trains and employs women from India. Some of these women will convert printed text into digital files through our web tool. Our online system provides access to books, especially for those with limited resources.
- Nanosatellite — Communications and Data Handling
Jake Hedlund, Michael Ruiz, Zachary Singh
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
The CDH subsystem controls the 3U CubeSat nanosatellite and interfaces with all other subsystems including the Active Attitude Control System, ground communications, and any specified payload. It also monitors the health of the satellite and disables malfunctioning components.
- ShoutBoard
Evan Havilsch, Ketan Kumar, Tovin Thomas
Advisor: A. Amer
ShoutBoard is a new kind of social network that places an emphasis on location. It enables people to interact with those that are nearest them. Users will post messages via their smartphones that are seen by other users in the vicinity. There will be an iPhone application and website.
- Swordfish — Relationship-Based e-Mail Client
Jim Brock, Rahul Krishnakumar, Alan Ruiz, Karoly Somogyvari, Graham Turbyne
Advisor: A. Amer
Swordfish is a fresh approach to how your e-mail inbox is sorted. Current e-mail inbox's are sorted by the time a message is received, which leads to clutter and inefficiency. Swordfish aims to fix this by sorting your inbox based on relationships between the sender and receiver of the message.
- The Blue Plug
Loquen Jones, Sahil Verma
Advisor: A. Amer
Mobile interface plus central unit that communicates with multiple households to designate when electronics run, in order to reduce peak energy usage.
- TOP: Faster, More Efficient Server
Jackson Beachwood, Alec Furtado, Ben Rooke, Devin Wakefield
Advisor: A. Amer
This project aims to create a new framework for website development geared towards dynamic web applications.
- Dynamic Poverty Heat Map
Jonathan Ahumada, Jasmine Farias, Kurt Jurgens
Advisors: S. Figueira, M. Marquez (ART)
Working alongside HP and Fundacion Paraguaya, we will be creating a web application that will visually display data gathered in terms of graphs and a dynamic heat map. The sole purpose is to facilitate the distinction between the areas of most need and thus be able to allocate resources efficiently.
- myLife
Lauren Furumoto, Will Treuttner
Advisor: R. Mikkilineni
An API-driven web application built for Santa Clara University Law students, faculty, and staff to bring together the various web services used by the university. Offering convenience and ease of use, myLife is the one stop destination for news, e-mail, events, classes, meetings, and more.
- Personal Computer Linked Server Network
Brian Verduzco
Advisor: Y. Fang
A linked system of servers running off of personal computers to enhance the capabilities of hosting a personal web server.
- JARVIS: Home Automation
Robert Avila, Ian McIvor, Mark Sinclair, Luiza Sinisterra (EE)
Advisors: R. Grover (EE), W. Shang
Developing a control system for the Solar Decathlon House competition with the use of micro-controllers, sensors, and smart, energy efficient logic.
- Omoverhi
Richard Fong (ME), Guillermo Gallardo (ME), Will Jeffrey (ME), Danny Maedea (ME), Gabriel Romero
Advisors: D. Lewis, R. Marks (ME)
Low-cost premature infant incubator for implementation in developing countries.
- Sound Wave Analytic Graphics Application
Rohini Deb (BE), Samantha Pham
Advisors: S. Figueira, Y. Yan (BE)
A mobile application utilizing sound waves to examine the health of vocal folds
2011-2012
- Mobile Sea
Srikar Karempudi
Advisor: M. Pantoja
Mobile Sea shows a new method of interfacing with a computer program, using an Android device as a peripheral. This is demonstrated through a computer game, which additionally has educational value through its demonstrations of basic physics and fluid dynamics, which the user interacts with through interesting puzzles.
- eCampusMobile
Sara Philips, Danielle Pontes, Keesa Robinson
Advisor: D. Atkinson
A mobile web application designed for Santa Clara University students, eCampusMobile makes major eCampus functions such as viewing a class schedule, adding/dropping classes, and swapping/editing classes accessible to students on-the-go. Expanding accessibility to mobile devices allows students to use eCampus' time-sensitive functions in a convenient and efficient manner.
- Ridyourdorm.com
Nina Bortolotto, Ryan Selewicz
Advisor: S. Figueira
Ridyourdorm.com is a new web application designed to allow Santa Clara University students to advertise used products such as textbooks and furniture to other students for trade or sale in an effort to improve recycling of items that would otherwise be thrown away or sold outside of the university community.
- Course Forge
Eric Herde, Graden Rea, Curtis Wilcox
Advisor: D. Lewis
Students do not want to spend a lot of time figuring out what classes they should take next quarter. Course Forge is a web service that saves time and effort by creating class schedules for students based on their Degree Audit.
- TAG: Virtual Eyes for a Virtual Reality
Eric Rahman, Ryan Shin
Advisor: M. Pantoja
TAG is a middleware for stereoscopic 3D video games that analyzes the player's brainwaves through EEG technology as well as patterns in user input to deduce what the player is looking at and then modify the rendering system to actually focus on that object, emulating human eyes within a virtual world.
- Virgil: Tablet-friendly Course Management
Jack Finley, David Silver
Advisor: A. Amer
Virgil is a course management system optimized for the use of tablets in the classroom, greatly simplifying the distribution of classroom materials from teachers to students using iPads. Closely integrated web and iPad applications improve the viability of tablets in the classroom for both teachers and students.
- Touch Text Editor
Matt Baker, Eric Sprauve
Advisor: J. Holliday
An IDE for the iPad, allowing the user to limit their interactions with the "soft" keyboard to maximize productivity while coding on the iPad.
- Gooey Games
Jeremy Bunyard, Angelique Parsons
Advisor: S. Figueira
Gooey Games is an online educational system intended for use within the classroom as well as at home.
- The Green Giraffe Project
Ernesto Hernandez, Kikelomo Oshinoiki, Hariharan Rajagopalan
Advisor: S. Figueira
The Green Giraffe Project is a web portal geared toward young children participating in grades K-5 as an introduction to the web and its basic functionalities. It includes features such as a Web Search, Email, and Online Social Networking within the classroom setting.
- Condition: DIVE
Meghan Khurana, Rachel McGuigan
Advisor: R. Mikkilineni
A website designed to collect and display scuba diving conditions at various dive site locations in Northern California.
- Water Pathogen Detection App
Connor Carey, John Seubert
Advisor: S. Figueira
We are working with electrical and bioengineering students to create a probe that can detect bacteria in water for developing countries. We will be creating an Android app.
- Transparently Reducing NVIDIA Graphics Card Power Consumption in Low Load Environments
Kevin Sullivan
Advisor: S. Figueira
Current graphics card power consumption at idle/low load is much higher than it could be. I manipulate the clock speeds of the graphics card to reduce power consumption, ideally without the user noticing. This is largely aimed at the overclocking community, which has no convenient power reduction options available.
- eRescue
Casey Larson, Kristen Muramoto, Rosemary Pham, Tim So
Advisor: S. Figueira
eRescue is a crowdsourcing emergency notification app for the iPhone that will increase the likelihood of victim recovery.
- Black Box
Christopher Jamison, Nick Perkis, Chris Williams
Advisor: J. Holliday
An Android mobile text messaging application employing password protection, encryption of stored and sent messages, and sessions each time the application is used in order to secure the user's sensitive information.
- Get Me There
Monica Camorongan, Joe Schneider
Advisor: S. Figueira
An iPhone application that will allow individuals with learning disabilities to travel through their communities independently. Our primary user group currently consists of the students at the Santa Clara Adult Education Center.
- infinityBoard
Collin Lee, Justin Miller, Ryan Sacia
Advisors: S. Krishnan (EE), D. Lewis
infinityBoard is a simple and unobtrusive blackboard replacement that functions simultaneously as a writing surface and a digital interactive content display. infinityBoard enables professors to bring all the benefits of digital content to their lectures while allowing them to focus on teaching rather than the complications of technology.
- Spartan
Arun Koshy, Siddharth Parmar, Anirudh Rao
Advisors: A. Amer, S. Krishnan (EE)
Our current grid system has not been altered for many years, which implies there is potential for more blackouts due to future technology. Our proposed solution is a prototype for an electrical power control mechanism based on theoretical research to build more robust and efficient power management systems.
- Remote Data Acquisition
Stephen Cauterucio, Corey Simoncic (EE)
Advisors: D. Atkinson, S. Krishnan (EE)
We are building a system which retrieves sensor readings from machines in the civil engineering lab and sends them to a smartphone where they will be displayed graphically.
- Heat Activated Wearable Technology (HAWT)
Sonny Gandhi, Marcia Leung (BE), William Rosario (EE), Lauren Shishido (EE), Brian Tseng (BE)
Advisors: A. Amer, S. Krishnan (EE), H. Lee (ME)
A self-sustaining system has been developed using human body heat to power a low-energy biomedical device. The battery life in low-powered systems can be greatly increased by utilizing this alternative energy source. Additionally, biomedical readings are transferred and displayed on an iPhone.
- SHARK - Sensory Hull Autonomous Research Kayak
Alex Hanchett (ME), Marcus Montanile (ME), Doug Renfro, Paul Twining (ME), Max Wyman (ME)
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
The SHARK project is a low-cost robotic kayak capable of collecting and transferring data to a central hub. It is also designed to be integrated with an autonomous kayak fleet for multi-robot control.
2010–2011
- CSS Arena
Jason Barry
Advisor: S. Figueira
A competitive CSS Gallery that increases traffic and exposure to your website by battling other players for virtual territory in a Risk-esque game of Web design dominance.
- What Should I Listen To?
Katherine Lanier
Advisor: S. Figueira
A dynamic website that attempts to recommend to users, based on preferences they define, what they should listen to next. The site is constantly updated as users input new information.
- LabelCheck.net
Rudy Rimland
Advisor: R. Mikkilineni
LabelCheck.net integrates recipe and menu management with shopping. Targeted to consumers with dietary restrictions, site members identify, verify, and track ingredients and nutritional content in their diet. On the website, members create, select, and share recipes and menus. When shopping, members access automatically generated shopping lists with the smartphone application.
- The Future is Green
Melissa Conlin, Michael Truong
Advisor: R. Mikkilineni
The Future Is Green project, for the Girl Scouts of Northern California, teaches young girls about green technologies. We laid the foundation for the website which works as a learning tool, incorporating information about sustainable technologies, and teaching the advantages of these technologies through interactive simulations.
- Best Unified Reservation Portal (BURP!)
Pardeep Kang
Advisor: R. Mikkilineni
A Web-based resource to assist restaurant goers with cost-free reservations, reviews, offers, information, and more. A fun and easy-to-use Web portal, which would be beneficial for restaurateurs and their guests.
- Quantification of information in a Computational Neural Model
Guy Hotson
Advisors: J. Birmingham (PHYS), S. Figueira
The goal of this project is to create a software tool which simulates neural dynamics then calculates the amount of information in the resulting neural spike trains.
- GPRS + Paramics: Low-Cost Traffic Signal Synchronization
Nick Bergseng, Riccardo Franchi
Advisors: J. Holliday, R. He (CE)
Across the United States, incorrect timings on traffic signals waste millions of gallons of gasoline and hours of travel time. GPRS + Paramics connects powerful traffic modeling software with low-cost microcontrollers via cellular modems, cheaply and effectively providing system-wide traffic signal monitoring and control to cities of any size.
- Web-based Satellite Mission Operations Dashboard
Laura Bica
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
This project will create a new way of displaying important spacecraft data for both public and private purposes. The data will be shown on a Web-based dashboard, and will be semi-automated to allow for the most current and relevant data to always be shown.
- A Perception to interaction Mobile interface
David Witherspoon
Advisor: A. Amer
A project to better incorporate mobile communication and interaction into the real world by offering a means to set up a communication channel prompted by physical location, a physical item, or injected markers in an existing digital medium.
- Note Sharing
Bryan Clark, Christopher Gargani
Advisor: A. Amer
An application for sharing notes in a group with minimal set-up on the users’ part.
- International Phone Card Application
Arturo Posadas
Advisor: S. Figueira
Create a telephony platform using open source software and VoIP technology to establish a database ranking international phone cards from best to worst. The ranking will be done according to user inputs and collective intelligence.
- FACE: Fair Trade Aid Calculator for Everyone
Ryan Davidson, Eva Jensen, Rosalie Tolentino
Advisors: S. Figueira, R. Mikkilineni
FACE is a senior project designed to help The World of Good Organization, winner of the Katherine Swanson Equality Tech Award, promote fair trade around the world. FACE incorporates a Fair Wage Survey application on five mobile platforms and Web-based visualizations, which creatively illustrate the organization’s fair-wage data.
- Core Dump: A game for Demystifying Programming
Gavin Hagiwara, Dustin Han
Advisor: D. Atkinson
A Flash-based platform game that teaches basic programming concepts to the player. The player will utilize a programming language interface to manipulate the environment, combat enemies, and solve puzzles.
- Fixing Return Oriented Programming Vulnerabilities
Kevin Rowe, James Taguchi
Advisor: J. Holliday
Hackers can use the “return oriented programming” exploit technique to bypass defenses and take control of computer systems. We examine the method of attack and propose a defensive software implementation to mitigate return oriented programming vulnerabilities.
- WiFind
Chris Dunder
Advisor: S. Figueira, D. Lewis
WiFind is a low cost, software-based smartphone positioning system for indoor areas such as offices, schools, hospitals, and malls where GPS is unavailable or poor quality but WiFi coverage is prevalent.
- Spelling and Sorcery
Garrett Andersen
Advisor: M. Pantoja
Spelling and Sorcery is a smartphone application, combining the appeal of mobile games with educational goals. Players will spell their way to victory in a fun and engrossing vocabulary game. This app will bring a new spin on the classic word game formula.
2009–2010
- Dynamic MIDI Controller
Sabrina Burney, Sonia Burney, Eric Silverman
Advisor: Silvia Figueira
The Dynamic MIDI controller brings an entirely new way of composing music. Utilizing various sensors, anyone can create a unique personalized musical instrument that interfaces with a computer or standalone synthesizer, manipulating sound to create music in a completely new and customized way.
- Online Portfolio Builder
DanAnh Do, Taryn Tsukayama
Advisor: Silvia Figueira
The Online Portfolio Builder is a desktop application that will enable anyone, regardless of web programming experience, to compile their work into a personalized portfolio. Using Adobe AIR technology, it provides a very sophisticated, simple, and organized interface that will accommodate a diverse audience of users.
- Skoolbook.net
Jeff Cichocki, Armando Delgado-Lopez, Sean Furtado
Advisor: Silvia Figueira
A Facebook-style educational web platform designed to promote better teacher-student communication as well as student-student communication with an overall goal to improve the academic environment.
- The Portable Health Log
Anne Miller
Advisor: Silvia Figueira
Senior citizens face problems of control over their medical treatment, miscommunication, and misunderstanding a doctor’s instructions. The solution this project proposes is a secure personal and portable health log that is accessible via iPhone and provides patients with control and flexibility over their health care.
- TRECC: Trusted Roots Extended to Compromise Containment
Paul Makowski
Advisor: JoAnne Holliday
Static roots of trust provide assurance to code at rest (code written to disk) but do nothing to assure that code in memory can be trusted. TRECC begins the process of extending assurance to code in memory by containing user space compromise on Linux hosts.
- Detecting Attacks on a Wireless Network
Max Demin, Kenneth Ko
Advisor: JoAnne Holliday
Focusing on network sniffers, we will notify the network administrator when a malicious person uses common techniques in an attempt to victimize someone currently using the network to gain access to privileged information.
- WiFind
Christopher Dunder
Advisor: JoAnne Holliday
This project provides location tracking using wireless network triangulation. WiFind has applications in asset management, building automation and context aware applications, and is easily scalable.
- Chaos of the Bloodborne
Christopher Menezes, Sean Mooney, Kevin Thomas
Advisor: Dan Lewis
A turn-based strategy game focusing on the development of characters through an intricate story, complex moral choices, and emotional connections. Players will attempt to save the human race as they fight against a flood of demons who seek to rule the world.
- M.O.D. Shell
Mark Magtoto
Advisor: Dan Lewis
This platformer game will allow the player to explore a world with interesting characters and an intricate storyline. Shell, the main protagonist in the game, will travel across dimensions to create peace in the worlds she will encounter.
- Project Onset
Francis Jang, Rodd Naderzad, Eric Rahman
Advisor: Dan Lewis
This 2d video game introduces programming concepts to users, bridging the gap between enjoyment and education. Players test their ability to apply different levels of logic to achieve success as they are warped to and from various spirit realms procuring the assistance of spirit companions to achieve given objectives.
- Blind Samurai
Christopher Blanco, Neil Diaz
Advisor: Dan Lewis
Blind Samurai is a video game based on the concept of sound. With an environment inspired by feudal Japan, the player battles his way through countless enemies to survive. Blind Samurai can be played on PC computers.
2008–2009
- Educational Tool for Finances
Marco Echandi, Jason Goetsch, James Lewis
Advisor: J. Holliday
A Flash program designed to familiarize mentally challenged adults with daily financial tasks.
- Swarm of Brian: Enhancing Trackbot’s Application Code
Brian Jenkins
Advisor: S. Figueira
The TrackBot application code, an educational robotics platform, is enhanced to provide a simpler Java API for an extensible TrackBot base class. Bump sensing and other features are implemented as demonstrations of these enhancements. Additionally, a Swarm Java API is created that can be extended, implementing autonomous, collaborative swarming behavior among multiple TrackBots. A swarm simulation is also implemented based on the Swarm Java API.
- First-Place Learning
Jose Delgado, Debra Mortensen, Sean Schiff
Advisor: J. Holliday
A Web-based learning tool that intends to solve the incompatibility issue between mentally challenged adults and the childish learning tools that are currently presented to them. The program is designed specifically for them, at their age, around themes that engage their interests and attention.
- CSCADE: An Extensible Architecture for Cluster Robotics Research
Eric Rowe, Jeff Steinhilber
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
CSCADE (Controller and System Communication Architecture and DataTurbine Engine) is used for communication between the hardware level of a distributed experimental system and a high-level controller. It simplifies controller design by promoting the reuse of components across multiple experiments and configurations.
- H.264 3D Video Encoding
Jacob LaPinta, Johnathan Le, Jaipal Nijjar, Eamonn Pascal
Advisor: N. Ling
Using JSVM to create a user-friendly application that will implement the multiview coding aspects of the software, this application will take inputs of a video shot from several angles in order to output an optimally compressed 3D video according to the user’s preferences.
- Remote Home Monitoring System
Nick Treat
Advisor: S. Figueira
The Remote Home Monitoring System is a small-scale device capable of monitoring a small area. The Ethernet connection allows this device to be connected to a network. The device can be monitored remotely, and settings on the device, such as desired room temperature, can be changed remotely, as well.
- NoteFlash Shared Note-Taking Environment
Jonathan Azoff, Cameron Boehmer, Ben Cherry
Advisor: D. Lewis
The NoteFlash website provides users with a rich text interface for taking notes in settings from the lecture hall to the board room. As the user types, NoteFlash will provide the user with snippets from related documents in the NoteFlash database that can be used as reference or included directly in the user’s own notes.
- Dual Application Vibration Simulator
Michael Hofman, Christopher Leatham (ME), Adam Wong (ME)
Advisor: D. Atkinson, T. Hight (ME), C. Kitts (ME), T. Shoup (ME)
A dual-drive shake table that will be used for simulating past earthquake data and performing satellite testing. The satellite application will perform a sweep at varying frequencies in an attempt to identify the resonant frequency.
- SWATH: A Small Waterplane Thin Hull Solution for Shallow Water Bathymetric Mapping
Thomas Blozis, John Fisher (EE)
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
The SWATH, small waterplane area twin hull boat, is an autonomous platform for bathymetric mapping of bodies of water using sonar. A doppler velocimeter logger and an attitude and heading reference system to increase the accuracy of the bathymetric maps are also incorporated.
2007–2008
- Secure E-Cash Transaction System
Anirudha Jadhav, Tirumala Panganamala
Advisor: T. Schwarz
- Roverwerx: Urban Search and Rescue Robot
Matt Ambauen (ME), Casey Kute (ME), Ben Sobczak
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
- CheckOutMySeat.com
Matthew Lanham
Advisor: D. Lewis
- Solar Installation Project: Monitoring System
Brian Albright, Ryan Leary
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
- NASA Small Spacecraft Command and Control Automation
James Reavis
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
- OBSIDIAN Nanosatellite Biological Instrumentation System
Joseph Hotchkiss, Christian Ochoa, Rafferty Saturno, Allen Yeung
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
- Blue Wireless Communication
Okechukwu Mbanugo (EE), Tim Monzures
Advisor: S. Krishnan (EE)
- Online Teaching Evaluations
Aaron Ramirez
Advisor: T. Schwarz
- HappyHome
Yesenia Herrera (EE), Chris Iwamura, Kimberly So (EE), Evan Uyehara
Advisor: S. Krishnan (EE)
- Topclass Online Periodical Content Library and Submission System
Ross Dakin
Advisor: R. Mikkilineni
- BMW Door Mechantronics Project
Alfonso Chartier, Calvin Hwung (EE), Julian Lupu (EE)
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
- 3D Telemetry Modeling Project
Daniel Chance
Advisor: C. Kitts (ME)
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