Posters and presenters lined the Duffield Hall atrium Thursday as students showcased a wide range of cutting-edge technology projects at this year's Bits On Our Minds event.
For two hours, the students explained the purpose and motivation for the project to students and faculty passing through Duffield.
This year's BOOM featured 44 projects presented by approximately 116 students, according to Danica Rickards, program coordinator for Undergraduate Student Services in the Bowers College of Computing and Information Sciences.
One of the projects was QueueMeIn, developed by members of the Cornell Digital Technology and Innovation Project team. According to team member Richard Gu '25, QueueMeIn was created to streamline office hours and promote fairness. The project, which began development in 2017, will allow students to type in a column of questions, which will then be answered by teaching assistants in the order in which they are received.
Samaritan Scout, by William Rosenthal '27, is a search engine that connects volunteers with opportunities by scraping the web. This project was developed out of a love of volunteering and a desire to make it more accessible.
“Helping others is easy. … And with the advent of the Internet, it's become even more accessible,” Rosenthal said. “We should use [the Internet] eternally.must use [it] To be a good Samaritan. ”
This engine currently only includes the New York City metropolitan area and northern New Jersey areas. However, Rosenthal said plans are underway to expand the system throughout the Northeast and add the ability for organizations to submit posts.
Eight awards were presented at BOOM, one from each of the three Bowers CIS divisions and one from each of the five event sponsors: Cisco, Infosys, LinkedIn, Millennium Management, and Sandia National Laboratories. The winning team received a $1,000 cash prize and a trophy.
The team of Rishi Gurjar ’27 and Simon Ilincev ’27 won two awards for their project ColdCraft. ColdCraft is a browser extension for Google Chrome that integrates with LinkedIn and Gmail and allows users to create cold emails based on their resume and availability. Ilincev said the extension uses an extensive language model similar to the one behind ChatGPT.
“[ColdCraft will] keep [students] This is valuable time to prepare for the interview and focus on the basics of what you are actually working on,” Gurjar said. “If every email he sends is the same except for one or two sentences, he shouldn't waste his time on that.”
Corporate sponsors may choose to have a representative at the table during the event, allowing for direct connections and networking with interested students.
Nico Ortega, a data scientist at LinkedIn, presented one of the awards to the ColdCraft team. Mr. Ortega relished the opportunity to speak to students and demonstrate that getting a job at a large company is more achievable than it seems.
Ortega said students' experience presenting projects to the public helps them build the communication skills needed to work in the industry.
In her closing remarks at the event, Bowers CIS Dean and Professor of Engineering Kavita Bala said she was impressed by the breadth of this year's projects.
“It included a wide range of ideas across all kinds of use cases and potential user groups,” says Bala. “[It’s] It's really great that we can be so creative as a group. ”
Chris Walkowiak is a Sun contributor and can be reached at: [email protected].
