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Electrical and Computer Engineering (ELECOMP)
Capstone Design Program
Dean Marchese addressing the 2024 ELECOMP Capstone Summit
Dean Anthony Marchese remarks on ELECOMP Capstone
Watch Dean Marchese's Opening Remarks at the 2024 ELECOMP SUmmit
(URI Photo/Catherine Scott)
URI ranked No. 1 public university in New England, among best nationally by Wall Street Journal
The University of Rhode Island (URI) was ranked the top public university in New England and the 35th-best public university in the U.S. by the Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2025 Best Colleges ranking. URI ranked 84th overall out of 500 universities, ahead of the University of Connecticut. The ranking focuses on student outcomes, learning environment, and diversity. URI President Marc Parlange highlighted the university’s dedication to quality education and student success. With record applications and $150 million in financial aid, URI continues to support its expanding student body.
Testimonial from Jens Hupkau, VP Engineering, Cambridge Technology
The last two CAPSTONE projects have been very successful in terms of reaching the Anticipated Best Outcome. The 2018/19 project outcome has now been fully integrated into our SMC platform as a standard feature for controlling external axes. The development from the 2019/20 project was an IMPORTANT technology catalyst for our NexGen Polytek scanner product. The functionality developed by the students was extended by our team and released in this year’s SMC/SMD software. As a result, Novanta now has an entirely new product that will be launched in the market next year. One beta is already working at a customer in a critical medical application and 2 additional systems are sold for other applications. The quick video under this link shows the culmination of the student’s work, taken to a final product by our engineers: Latest release ScanMaster Designer Software with polygon support fully integrated – in the demo our engineer is importing a random image, with a few clicks configures the software and then laser scans it on a piece of black paper. THIS IS A BIG DEAL! – it brings the polygon scanning technology, which was very limited and difficult to use in the past, to our mainstream software and controls platform. With this new capability, Novanta will be able to unlock several new applications that previously were not feasible for complexity or cost reasons.
Novanta is looking forward to build onto the success of previous projects by sponsoring another CAPSTONE project for the 2021/22 Academic year.
2019-2020 project by team Cambridge Technology
2018-2019 project by team Cambridge Technology
Program Overview
Welcome to the ELECOMP Capstone Design Program for Electrical (ELE) and Computer (COMP) engineers at the University of Rhode Island. The ELECOMP Capstone Design Program promotes a dynamic collaboration between senior-level engineering students and industry sponsors to design, build, program, and test solutions to real-world problems. Faculty members are available to consult on the projects; bringing to bear their own experience in key engineering disciplines. Students gain valuable experience as they apply theory to practice, while industry sponsors benefit from introductions to young talent and the innovative solutions they present. This experience is educational, exciting, and productive for both the Student Teams and Industry Sponsors. Such collaboration prepares our students for positions with top companies, provides innovative solutions to our industry sponsors’ most pressing problems, and makes the world a better place as project solutions are implemented for the public good. The students’ abilities to introduce new technologies, tools, processes, designs and academic rigor should not be overlooked. Additionally, they bring a naiveté that forces questions to be answered about a company’s established products, processes and protocols.
Bridging the gap from the classroom to industry is critical to the success of today’s students. Historically, this has been achieved through contrived projects that simulate real world conditions. However, they fall short in a few key areas by not allowing students to experience external schedule challenges, poor documentation, vendor dependencies, decision making, and risk taking. The ELECOMP Capstone Design Program exposes and demands students to be fully engaged in these real-world issues.
While the Capstone experience is important to the students, it is also important to the University’s mission to provide educated workers for the state’s businesses. Students in the Program learn not only to apply their engineering skills, but also receive the opportunity to learn about how professionals operate in the engineering field. This dual-emphasis allows graduates to work with companies to learn, first-hand, the opportunities available to them. The Capstone Design Program has led to many successful pairings at many companies. The value of this connection making cannot be overstated.
See Testimonials from Companies
