After years of hard work and study, MIS seniors always have a lot to show off at the Fox School of Business Management Information Systems Capstone Project Showcase. The most recent Showcase, held at the end of April, was no exception: The 17 teams of seniors that gathered to present their final projects unveiled everything from a medical app designed to help doctors track elderly patients’ health regimens to a personalized news aggregation service to an improved search function on Temple’s course database.
The MIS Showcase is a unique opportunity for students to combine all of what they have learned in class with their own entrepreneurial skills, says Fox IT Advisory Board Chairman Bruce Fadem, who oversees the Mentoring program for IBIT. “This year’s teams showcased a wide range of exciting ideas and demonstrated the value of their education with professional business plans and excellent presentations.”
The winning team, selected by a panel of judges, designed an app that tackles the problem of evaluating the maintenance needs of bridges. “On average,” the team notes, “it takes an expert three to six weeks to properly assess a bridge’s structural needs and report these findings to the local government.” Their solution, the app they call Floating Bridges, combines 3D mapping drones, bridge-assessment algorithms and augmented reality to provide local governments with a more efficient, less expensive way to survey and prioritize problem bridges “on a yearly or even monthly basis.”
The team, which included Alexandra Iacovetti, Nicholas Rivera, Bridget Silk and Benjamin Sulaiman, won $500 for coming in first place — though the entire Capstone process has been rewarding in itself, Silk says. “We really benefited from bouncing ideas off each other,” she adds. “It was an awesome experience to end the year with.”
The Capstone projects are often cited by students as one of the highlights of the MIS experience. The opportunity to put so many skills and practices to the test (not to mention the chance to flex their creative muscles) in a competitive setting is both fun and helpful in terms of prepping for life outside of the Fox School.
“The project created an opportunity to fully develop and pitch a real, live platform that addresses a problem,” says Kate Morrison, whose team, District One Sports, created a one-stop digital resource for high school sports stats. “Going through this process end to end created more passion, teamwork and ownership than any other group project I’ve worked on, and it was a beneficial transition from the teaching/learning environment into the professional workplace.”
The full roster of projects presented at the April event included:
Solutions to Medical Non-Adherence
A digital solution for health-care providers, pharmacies and patients to insure that patients are taking their medication consistently and following correct procedures after leaving the hospital.
Team: Michael Ingram, Heather Makwinski, Joshua Michalik, Samantha Talarico
Mentor: Dale Danilewitz
Documed: Improving Patient Engagement
Real-time access for doctors to patients’ medical records to help improve diagnosis and treatment.
Team: Johnathan Holland, Jeremy A. John, Alan Kim, George Raymond
Mentor: Matt Winter
WorkFit
An application designed to motivate people to make exercise a priority, using social tools, games, geolocation and goal suggestions.
Team: John Kerin, Matthew Leaver, Sara Monahan, Thompson Nguyen
Mentor: Ben Hasan
CaParkLee
An application that measures the core body temperatures and heart rates of elderly patients, aiming to help doctors track their patients’ regimens.
Team: Leor Capunitan, Thomas Lee, Chris Park
Mentor: Jeff Hamilton
Social Academic Studying Solution
A web-based solution for connecting students who have similar courses and curriculums, aimed at enabling collaborative studying, as well as helping students manage deadlines and study hours.
Team: Evan Chiao, Kin Lee, Connor Gawlik, Mike Dennis
Mentor: Satbir Bedi
District One Sports: Simplifying High School Sports Statistics
A one-stop digital resource for reporting and viewing high school sports scores and statistics.
Team: Rob Higgins, Kate Morrison, Rhea Prabhu, Ben Shaffer
Mentor: Sondra Barbour
Airline Entertainment
A digital platform providing airline passengers with in-air and terminal entertainment and gaming options.
Team: Stephanie Cheng, Tyler Gaber, Kevin Santoni, Dario Trabucco
Mentor: Sunil Misra
Vulpine Analytics
An analytics tool to help provide employees with information and insights about the connection between their wellness and their productivity, helping them balance health habits with performance at work.
Team: Derek Gibbs, Eric Koeck, Erika Nixon, David Yastremsky
Mentor: Paul Amorello
VisRecs
A visual-recognition application that harnesses unstructured data hidden within images, videos. and gifs uploaded onto social media and/or the Internet, and helps structure it into meaningful ideas.
Team: Dominick Falco, Alex Korjeski, Alex Meyer, Louisa Carleton
Mentor: Niraj Patel
SpotaGuide
A platform that connects travelers with personalized, low-cost tour itineraries.
Team: Phil Tocci, Kevin Vong, Anthony Vu, Brian Wallace
Mentor: Bruce Fadem
Floating Bridges
An application that combines 3D mapping drones, bridge-assessment algorithms and augmented reality to give experts a cost-effective way to assess a bridge’s structural needs.
Team: Alexandra Iacovetti, Nicholas Rivera, Bridget Silk, Benjamin Sulaiman
Mentor: Joe Spagnoletti
Newsence
A system for aggregating multiple news sources and customizing them in a fashion that fits into each user’s lifestyle and preferences.
Team: William Agentowicz, Brandan Mackowsky, Eugene Tartaglione, Adama Traore
Mentor: Sukumar Narayanan
Gamer Connect
An application that allows gamers across all platforms (Xbox, Playstation and PC) to find one another and form teams based upon their respective skill levels.
Team: Andrew Fiss, Tyler Urquhart, Elijah Jamison, Kyle Domsohn
Mentor: Shariq Khan
DDesignate
A ride-sharing application in the vein of Uber/Lyft that helps users avoid driving while intoxicated, while providing a way for the user to get his or her car home safely.
Team: Rob Lesnik, Kyle Matusik, Jonathan Plugaru, Casid Sohou
Mentor: Andrew Porter
Esperanza Database Consolidation
A database-consolidation tool for merging and centralizing data from the non-profit Esperanza to allow for better and more streamlined marketing and communication efforts.
Team: Danielle Buerger, Kevin Hamilton, Leeya Ressom
Mentor: Jon Scott
BookLit
An application aimed at third-grade students within the School District of Philadelphia, focused on improving reading skills via online competition, incentives and reading comprehension quizzes. Teachers are able to track students’ improvements.
Team: Andi Agolli, Jeffrey Craskey, Mohit Patel, Urvesh Patel
Mentor: Andrea Anania
Course Search
A search function that allows Temple students to look for any class in the Temple database based on keywords/categories that pertain to class topics or subtopics.
Team: Quy Le, Kevin Diem, Darpan Patel, Michael Black
Mentor: Chris Cera
