Bucknell University Electrical and Computer Engineering
The Bucknell Electrical and Computer Engineering Department is seeking projects for its senior capstone course. Deadline for project ideas is July 15, with rolling review (first come, first served). We have a new relationship model this year that has three different tiers based on your specific project needs and resources. If you don’t have a project, you can still support students in our department by making a gift.
Overview
The Bucknell Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department is seeking projects with a mix of hardware and software for our senior design course for the coming academic year. Externally-sponsored senior design projects are highly valued by our students and offer benefits to both students and clients. Students value the mentoring and enhanced relationships gained by working with real-world clients. Clients value getting to know the students and this can be an excellent opportunity to identify talent and understand the perspectives of new engineering graduates.
What Makes a Good Project?
- Teams consist of both electrical and computer engineers, so projects ideally include both hardware and software elements.
- Given our facilities and students’ experience, prototype or proof of concept projects (Technology Readiness Level of 4-7) are generally most successful. We generally discourage projects that require considerable research (low TRL) or should be deployment-ready (high TRL).
- The best projects are those that can make a positive impact on your organization but that you don’t currently have the resources, time, or personnel to pursue.
- Given that these are student projects and the outcomes are uncertain, you should not suggest projects that are in your organization’s critical path.
- Nor do we encourage projects so far off your core competencies that the mentor from your organization may lose interest over the course of the academic year (August to May).
Project Tiers
- Start-Up Tier: If you have an idea for a project and would like a team to develop it for you, perhaps creating an early version for further development or just for fun, this is the appropriate tier. Bucknell’s ECE Department will fund the projects up to $1,000, and you will get detailed project documentation and reporting at the end of the project and be invited to attend the design exposition in May.
- Prototype Tier: If you would like to engage students to do a small project for an existing company or organization, this is appropriate. The ECE Department will fund up $1,000, and you are expected to match the project expenses on a one-to-one basis (up to $1,000). You will get project documentation and a prototype at the end of the project as well as attend the expo,
- Development Tier: If existing organizations would like to have a team do a larger scale project, this tier is more appropriate. There is a fixed fee of $5,000 for project expenses, the team will be covered by an NDA, and you will get the developed prototype, documentation, and any intellectual property that arises during the project. All funds go to the project, there is no overhead.
Background Information
Bucknell’s ECE senior design experience is a two-semester course sequence that teaches students good design practices and gives them experience in engineering design and project management. Our primary mission as a university is to provide a high-quality education for our students, and thus the learning experience for students takes priority over other goals. In other words, we are not a job shop, research center, or contract design house.
Student teams do problem identification and develop design plans through the fall, then build prototypes in the spring. The design process we use incorporates elements from lean start-ups early in the design process then shifts to a deadline-oriented¸ waterfall model later. In the start-up phase of the course, students are encouraged to question the value implied by the project description you provide. If you have a very specific project outcome in mind then please realize that students will be asked to look at other options and possibilities throughout the development process.
Approximate Course Timeline
- Summer: Project ideas evaluated and offered projects identified
- Late August: Classes start. Teams and projects will be assigned and students make contact.
- Early September: Face-to-face meeting with client as feasible.
- September – Thanksgiving: Project development and regular meetings with project mentors.
- January – February: Develop subsystems.
- February – March: Subsystem demonstrations.
- March – April: Integrated system development.
- Late April: Wrap-up, delivery and on-campus design project exposition.
Resources
Each design team consists of five to seven electrical and computer engineering seniors. Each team will have access to all of the college and departmental resources related to design, including design space, electrical test and measurement equipment, a variety of computing resources, and fabrication equipment including 3-D printing, laser cutting, and surface mount soldering/re-work equipment. Teams also have access to a full machine shop with advanced capabilities such as CNC machines and a water jet cutter.
Your Responsibility as a Client
- Clients should be prepared to be engaged with the project throughout the entire academic year.
- Regular client contact of the project helps the teams better understand their project and client interests. The students will be asked to meet with their client at least four to five times during each semester after they pass design milestones. We encourage more frequent communication.
- Each team will have a dedicated project manager by the end of September who will be the main point of contact to keep communication manageable.
- As the client, your primary job is to help the students understand their problem and to give them feedback about their decisions throughout the process.
- We appreciate all efforts to mentor the students in relevant areas based on your experience and knowledge. Some students may lack skills at functioning in an organization when they start the project. Learning to work on a project team is one of the important learning outcomes of this course.
- Students find on-site visits valuable and this should be encouraged if feasible.
- Intellectual property issues can be a concern for some projects. Please discuss needs for non-disclosure agreements or other reasonable intellectual property protections with us, we tend to be quite flexible. Please note that the university environment and lab spaces the students work in are not secure; highly proprietary or classified projects are generally not suitable.
Points of Friction
As with any project there are points of friction that can arise, and we’d like to make you aware of what some common ones are in advance:
- Inconsistent and unprofessional communication – students are still learning how to communicate professionally so initial interactions and team meetings may be disorganized with the time not used effectively. Your mentoring is very valuable in this area.
- Moving objectives – Early in the course we ask students to look at many options and understand the larger context of the project before starting technical work. They typically lack the deep background knowledge you have. Please be patient and help teach them since learning how to scope a project is an important outcome of the course.
- Time management – Students have many conflicting demands on their time and fragmented schedules. They are still learning effective time and project management habits so may oscillate between extremes of ‘too much’ and ‘too little’. Please be patient and provide guidance.
If you have a Project Idea
If you are interested in submitting one or more ideas please email Prof. Stu Thompson (mst008@bucknell.edu) with a brief description of potential projects. After we review the ideas we receive we will get back in touch if we believe the idea is feasible for a capstone project.
Examples of Past Clients and Projects
- GE Healthcare: A team explored the space of ultrasound machines and developed a Bluetooth-enabled sleeve for an ultrasound transducer so it could be used one-handed in emergency rooms. In addition to the prototype, the team contributed insights on the perception of GE Healthcare devices by those who interacted with them.
- Kinnect: A team worked with an entrepreneur to create a cloud-based video conferencing system to help support families and patients in long-term care facilities, like nursing homes. The technology was designed for families to easily connect with aging seniors who often have challenges with the complexity of modern technology.
- Kyndryl: A team explored how edge computing could be used in the energy industry and they created an interactive edge computing demonstration. The team showed the demonstration at a booth at the Hamburg Messe industrial automation conference in Germany at the end of the semester.
- PiLit: A team worked with a small business in the transportation safety industry to create a smarter, high spatial resolution automated work zone flasher system to help improve work zone safety.
If You Don’t Have a Project Idea
We run capstone every year, so if you are not in a position to sponsor a project this year, please consider one in the future. Bucknell students consistently say that working for a client doing hands-on design has had the biggest impact of all their academic experiences. If you are not in a position to sponsor a project, but would like to support student teams, please consider making a donation since the quality of the projects we can offer depends on the material and supplies available to students.