ECE Celebrates 2024-25 Senior Design Day

52 ECE Senior Design teams presented their capstone projects to the public on Friday, April 11, 2025, marking the end of the 2024-25 Senior Design course.

52 Senior Design teams from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering presented their capstone projects to the public on Friday, April 11, 2025, marking the end of the 2024-25 Senior Design course. Hundreds of sponsors, mentors, faculty, staff and community members attended the event. Industry representatives, many of them ECE alumni, served as volunteer judges for the student projects.

The ECE Senior Design program is a year-long course that takes students through each stage of the design development cycle. The teams, made up of four to five students each, work with industry and university partners to research problems and create real-world solutions. Sponsors and mentors guide the teams during the design process; this gives industry partners the chance to access new technologies and work one-on-one with a talented class of graduating seniors.

“Senior Design Day is the culmination of all the hard work the teams have put in for the academic year,” said Senior Design Director Rachana Gupta. “It’s their opportunity to shine, and to show off the skills and expertise they gained at NC State.”

One industry partner, Siemens, sponsored two projects this year. Powell Lowe, a protection and automation EDP engineer with Siemens, was part of the company’s mentoring team. “Having students do a senior design project with us bridges the gap between university and the corporate space,” said Lowe. “It’s very rewarding to see students working with our equipment and growing their skills through this project. Mentoring has also helped us better understand our equipment, and learn by teaching. I think it’s a good growth opportunity for both sides.”

“Because of how broad the scope of our project was, Siemens had a lot of people mentor us,” said Chandler Lopez, who worked on one of the Siemens-sponsored projects. “They had a person that was a professional in each specific area. That helped us a lot with deciding the direction of the project, training, debugging and more.”

This year’s student teams created a number of incredible designs, including an egg vending machine, a guitar-like controller for MIDI instruments, a fingerprint authenticator, a six-foot fully-electric boat and more.

“I grew up playing with snap circuits. That was how I learned about and grew interested in electrical engineering,” said Nadia Stupec, team leader for the S.P.A.R.K. Logic team, whose modular kit helps teach computer logic to middle and high schoolers. “Our goal was to target kids that don’t get exposure to electrical engineering. So making that experience at a lower cost was critical, because snap circuits are upwards of $200. Ultimately, we were able to get the cost of the kit under $50, making STEM more accessible to students from different backgrounds.”

“It is rewarding to see the growth of the students through the semester and watching them have the opportunity to engage with technical experts so effortlessly and passionately at Design Day,” said Senior Design Associate Director Jeremy Edmondson. “We are very thankful to the sponsors, mentors and students who put so much time into the ECE Senior Design program; without them, our program would not be possible.”

Learn more about ECE Senior Design and how you can get involved as a project sponsor, mentor, judge and more.