What is a Capstone Project?
Current and past partners
Partner information
UW-Madison Computer Sciences Capstone Projects offer our undergraduates a real-world hands-on experience. They learn, and use, best practice software development techniques and agile principles.
Sponsoring a capstone project is a strong investment for any company, R&D organization, or non-profit that considers computing core to their success. Benefits of sponsorship include:
- Meeting and recruiting future employees
- Forming close connections with UW-Madison faculty and students
- Networking and forming connections with other project sponsors
- Solve technical and data related challenges
- Helping build the UW-Madison’s Computer Sciences program and shape the future of technology education in WI and beyond
Contact Justin Hines, Director of Corporate Relations, to discuss partnership opportunities at jhines3@wisc.edu.
We welcome sponsor project brief submissions at any time. Use this form to share your idea with us.
Sponsor FAQs
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What is a Capstone Project?
A Capstone Project leverages a student’s classroom experience and enables them to put classroom lessons into real-world practice. Capstone Projects are the culmination of a student’s undergraduate experience and are designed to launch them into successful careers in the private and public sectors.
As part of a Capstone Project, students will be enrolled in a course, where they will learn techniques that will take their projects from product inception through delivery. Classes will emphasize both real-world software development processes along with the development of interpersonal and professional skills necessary to be effective in today’s workplace.
Why sponsor a Capstone Project?
In addition to the above benefits, Sponsors partner closely with UW-Madison faculty, students, and staff to ensure students and sponsors make the most of the partnership. As a sponsor, you will get to know your student team well as you provide mentorship and attend formal presentations and program events. All students in the class will get to know your organization’s goals, interests, and technologies. Some organizations view Computer Science Capstone Projects as a semester-long job interview. Others see their involvement simply as a great way to get involved in the important task of preparing our students for fulfilling careers in tech.
What are the expectations Capstone Project sponsors?
All Capstone Project sponsors are required to 1) propose a project, 2) provide 2-3 project mentors who can work with students throughout the semester, and 3) invest financially.
What is the time commitment for Capstone Project mentors?
(Note that in some cases (but not all) sponsors and mentors are the same person.)
The amount of time required varies greatly, but at a minimum mentors can expect to:
● Attend three evening classes during a 15-week semester (kick-off, check-in, and final presentation)
● Work with UW Madison staff on the project concept before the semester begins and prepare a project one-pager for the students
● Mentor students 1-2 hours/week by answering questions, attending demos, and providing general technical support
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How do sponsors come up with good project ideas?
Our well-trained staff works closely with all sponsors to identify strong ideas that can be developed into successful projects. The best projects are:
● Sized appropriately for a group of 4-6 students. A project you might give 2-3 interns full-time for the summer is typically right for a Capstone project.
● Complex enough to be challenging yet simple enough for students to finish in 10-12 weeks
● Have a solid problem to solve
● Incorporate opportunities for the students to practice concepts such as solution discovery, requirements development, design/architecture, development, verification, test, and deployment.
● Have realistic, real-world constraints
What is the financial investment?
Sponsors can participate in the Capstone Projects for a $10,000 donation. Start-ups can sponsor a project for $5,000.
Participation in the capstone projects is also offered to all our N+1 Institute partners at a discounted rate, which in addition includes research workshops, micro-internships, hackathons, on-site corporate events and other opportunities for faculty and student engagement. Contact the N+1 Institute for more information.
What are the intellectual property issues?
Companies retain all of their intellectual property.
Capstone Projects
Event-Driven Fraud Detection: Capital One
Fraud detection is a key aspect of any successful banking business, and at Capital One we are always trying to improve these systems. Our challenge to you is to create a fraud detection system that is able to detect fraudulent activity and promptly notify the user via text. This project could also include the ability to process customer responses, allowing a user to confirm
or deny if a transaction is fraudulent.
This project will encompass several aspects of development, including the creation of a basic UI, backend fraud detection processing, sending SMS notifications, and potentially receiving and processing responses from the user to confirm if the transaction was fraudulent or not.
Clinical Charting Assessment Model: GE Healthcare
NextGen Perinatal Surveillance is a fetal monitoring medical device that provides the display, analysis, and assessment of a patient’s fetal strip during pregnancy. One key feature to enable the above workflow is allowing the clinician to chart directly on the fetal strip and sync those activities with the Electronic Health Record (EHR) which becomes part of the patient’s official record.
Problem Statement: Too much of the clinician’s time is spent charting/documenting which takes away from the time that they can assist, monitor, and care for their patients. Not only does this impact the productivity of the clinician, it also impacts the perceived quality of care for the patient. This project will determine how we can leverage technology to streamline the documentation processes to maximize the time a clinician has dedicated to patient care.
AI-Powered SQL Query Optimization: Google
Want to future-proof your tech career? Data management is always in demand, and now it’s getting a major AI upgrade. This project lets you dive into both worlds: you’ll master the data skills every company needs, then use cutting-edge AI and LLMs to optimize queries like a pro. It’s the perfect combo of classic and cool, setting you up for serious success.
This project aims to develop
an AI-driven system for optimizing and enhancing the performance of database queries. The system will leverage a deep understanding of query optimization techniques, database systems, and generative AI to analyze, rewrite, and suggest improvements to queries, resulting in faster execution times and improved overall system performance.
Immersive Office Hours on the Apple Vision Pro: Holos
With the rise of remote and hybrid learning, effective collaboration between students and instructors has become increasingly rare. Traditional video conferencing tools often
fail to provide a truly natural and engaging learning environment. Using the Apple Vision Pro, Swift/SwiftUI, and SharePlay as a foundation, develop an immersive collaboration experience designed for students and instructors to meet within. This experience could include
tools for real-time problem-solving sessions (like sticky notes, drawing tools, and whiteboards), dynamic content sharing (presenting notes, PowerPoints, or PDFs), interactive quizzes, and spatial audio to simulate a real-world office hours environment. Focus on creating satisfying and intuitive interactions to mimic the feel of an in person visit.
Interactive Wisconsin: Augmented Reality Storytelling: PBS Wisconsin
As a public media organization, PBS Wisconsin is committed to creating content that engages with all communities across Wisconsin. This project will explore how Augmented Reality (AR)
can enhance our storytelling by bringing
the history, culture, and communities of
Wisconsin to life in an interactive and
accessible way. The goal is to create a
functional, web-based AR prototype
that allows users to engage with physical
locations through their mobile device.
This project allows you to showcase your ability to innovate and solve real-world problems. You’ll have the opportunity to work alongside professionals in
digital storytelling and media production, providing you with valuable insights and networking opportunities that could help shape your career.
Transform the Future of Fashion With Your Coding Skills: Shopbop
Shopbop, an Amazon company, is a brand built on style, discovery, inspiration, and fun. To further engage our customers with these pillars, we are looking to explore social and interactive shopping experiences. We want to create something that will engage our customers
with the constantly changing fashion industry, and we would like to build brand-awareness and draw more customers to new products on our site. We have two projects to drive these new experiences: Crowdsource the best clothes on Shopbop (build a pairwise ranking system for comparing Shopbop products, similar to Flickchart forranking movies), and find the perfect Shopbop outfit (build a “Tinder”-like system for matching users with Shopbop outfits that they like).
Explore many more projects here.