Capstone Excellence Showcased: Stevens' 2025 Innovation Expo Brings Student Solutions to Life
200+ senior capstone projects demonstrate how Stevens experience culminates in market-ready innovations addressing real-world challenges
The culmination of Stevens' comprehensive capstone experience took center stage May 9 as the annual Innovation Expo filled campus, showcasing how the university's distinctive eight-semester design spine transforms students into industry-ready innovators who seamlessly blend technical excellence with entrepreneurial vision.
From healthcare breakthroughs to sustainable technologies, the projects represented the pinnacle of undergraduate achievement — senior capstone work that demonstrates how Stevens prepares future-focused, industry-tested graduates. Cancer detection systems. Drowsiness prevention technology for drivers. Pet safety innovations. Reimagined aerospace designs. Music technology and transportation infrastructure. Martian habitats. Strategic marketing plans for businesses ranging from local bakeries to global airports. An outdoor concert and indoor digital art exhibit. Plus the 10-year celebration of a Shark Tank-style pitch competition with substantial seed funding for promising ventures. All demonstrating the remarkable outcomes of Stevens' signature capstone approach.
The event began with welcome remarks ahead of the annual Thomas C. Scholl Lecture by Visiting Entrepreneurs.
“The projects you'll encounter today aren't merely academic exercises — they're potentially transformative solutions to pressing problems, created by the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders,” said President Nariman Farvardin. “Stevens has consistently pushed boundaries and redefined what's possible, but the most exciting innovations are those yet to come — the ones our students are creating right now. Today, you'll get a glimpse of that future.”
Nathan Schultz, the president and CEO of the California educational technology firm Chegg, delivered the Scholl Lecture, recounting his personal journey from meeting early-life learning challenges to evolving Chegg to a fully digital learning platform amid COVID-19 and the rapid rise of AI-based chat models.
Schultz closed by exhorting graduating seniors to “say yes,” noting “there’s an incredible power in starting off with yes versus starting off with no. It keeps you open to growth.”
Then it was time for campus to open to the public for presentations of several hundred individual and team capstone projects, showcasing the year-long innovations produced by seniors from all three of Stevens’ schools.
Smart wheels, sleek wings, sole cycles
School of Engineering and Science projects from a range of disciplines filled the Schaefer Athletic Center’s Canavan Arena. The remarkable innovations displayed here included:
team Smart Steer, showing a steering wheel for autonomous vehicles that checks periodically to make sure humans haven’t lost their grip on the wheel (or fallen asleep);
team VRS, unveiling its design and testing of a new airplane wing add-on that could cut air vortices, fuel costs and carbon consumption significantly;
team Boundless Buddy, demonstrating a system to geofence dogs without using shocks or other doggy traumas;
team PowerStep, bringing a device to recharge your phone as you walk using a special shoe packing piezoelectric technology in the sole;
team Green Case, offering a neat smartphone case that charges your phone using available sunlight or artificial light, even in dim conditions;
team SolarEV, showcasing a model of its small-footprint solar wall charger for locally charging electric scooters and other small vehicles, created in partnership with longtime Stevens industry partner L3Harris;
team Blu-E and team Green Hydrogen, each proposing more sustainable methods of producing hydrogen;
and team Urban Glide, displaying a working prototype electric skateboard with all-wheel suspension to cope with city curbs, sidewalks and uneven surfaces.
“Electric skateboards don’t have suspension systems,” explained Urban Glide team leader Evan Jinks, headed to a new role at Tesla in Nevada shortly after graduation. “This idea grew out of my frustration with potholes in streets."
Along one wall of the arena, civil, environmental and ocean engineering projects included restoration plans, designs and successful projects in places as variegated as the streets of downtown Hoboken, a canal in Miami and a flood-threatened cove in Queens.
“The biggest challenge in a project like this is cost control,” pointed out Christopher Scapati, whose team worked with environmental engineering firm Stantec to redesign water flow and restore ecology at a lakefront New York state park devastated by flooding. “We actually came in $2 million under budget, which was a good outcome.”
Along the opposite wall, novel biomedical engineering projects addressed a wide range of health challenges: home breathing monitors for asthmatics, a peanut-detection AI for those with severe allergies, a periodontal disease-monitoring system using color-changing test strips, a children’s ear-infection diagnostic device — and two kinds of glasses that monitor eye pressure for glaucoma patients and help avoid collisions.
"Overhead objects are a significant cause of injury for the visually impaired," noted Aurora Madera of team Sight Assist Technologies, explaining the team's concept design of photochromic glasses fitted with LRA motors and ultrasonic sensors.
Mars pods, wakeup prods, AI mods
A few steps away, in Stevens’ Walker Gym, systems engineering students displayed their senior capstone projects.
One of the top draws was WakeMate: a baseball cap that brain waves and heart rates as drivers operate vehicles, then nudges them to take a break if they appear to be nodding off. Attendees lined up five-deep to don the cap, clip on earlobe sensors and drive a simulated road course with a steering wheel and foot pedals as a computer monitor displayed their real-time physiological data.
Other systems engineering teams in the gym included:
QT, explaining its software solution converting large-language model and other AI-type frameworks into quantum-computing tools;
MindModel, demonstrating its AI-powered application to help multiple sclerosis patients better understand and interpret their own brain-imaging scans;
and C.H.A.R.M.I.N.G., unveiling its near-futuristic design for a Mars mission and settlement base complete with vertical farming and energy generated from native materials and sources.
Also in the gym, the Gallois Autonomous Robot Competition took place with a watery twist this year. In a nod to Stevens’ nautical history, the self-driving vehicles were boats rather than wheeled bots. Winning programmer David Storch took home a $1,000 prize.
Art and music happs, appetites for apps
Just across the lawn, in the University Center Gallery, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) students displayed music albums, compositions, art, video, multimedia and interactive video games — plus research touching upon fashion, addiction and post-grunge music, among other fascinating topics.
Valerie Calligy, a recent Simons Foundation neuroscience fellow, discussed her project to analyze people’s ability to focus attention. Consuming lots of short social media videos, she found, seemed to erode people’s ability to focus — yet gaming, she found, seemed to sharpen it a bit.
Alyssa Ip debuted her electro-pop EP To a Loved One, written and recorded about the anxieties and mental disorders of the college (and the life) experience. Jack Scherban played his debut album Notches, dropping polished beats that belied a work recorded in his bedroom using MIDI technology. Nearby, Sofie Lopez played her synth-pop debut EP Late bloomer, showing off exceptionally smooth vocals. Benjamin Kunze demonstrated a guitar pedal he engineered and built, combining analog and digital processing and effects into a single, easy-to-use device.
Multimedia projects included Jacob Carlos’ TV World —a video game and original soundtrack that required mastery of more than a half-dozen audio and video technology platforms — and Oscar Diaz’s Open Your Eyes, a multilayered experience featuring an hour-long video of a DJ spinning a mix of tracks as background images of a dreamy road trip morphed in time to the music.
Outside, an afternoon concert featuring HASS students got the juices flowing further. Six acts took stage, including Lopez and Scherban as well as Jan Slezka, Shelly Ferina, Eric Lee and Evan Sheppard playing a range of blending genres from metal to rap and beyond.
Just downhill, the School of Business pavilion inside the Babbio Center showed off research, entrepreneurial and consulting projects from B-school seniors. Research on display included deep dives into key financial topics ranging from T-Bills and ETFs to volatility, credit spreads and options pricing.
Other business-school teams explained year-long consultancies that paired them with small businesses, established companies and government agencies to supply planning and advice for a range of clients such as a local bakery, a Hoboken bar, a theater, the youth academy-arm of the region’s professional soccer club — even JFK Airport.
Nearby, the Gateway North building also housed cool projects in chemistry and chemical biology advancing new research, ideas and potential solutions for medical challenges such as COVID-19, stomach cancer, colon cancer and celiac disease and industrial challenges such as agriculture in salty soils.
Perfect pitches, a packed podium — plus prizes
Late in the day, attention shifted to DeBaun Auditorium for the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition. Since its founding 10 years ago, this Shark Tank-style pitch contest has awarded nearly $200,000 in total prizes to talented teams of undergrads vying for seed money to turn their capstone idea into a reality. Hosted as usual by New Jersey tech-impresario Aaron Price, the finale featured six teams.
A panel of judges drawn from industry, entrepreneurship and the Stevens alumni community listened to the pitches, asked focused questions — then scored the teams. Healthcare and AI were predominant themes this time: Of the half-doze teams on the stage, five offered AI-powered health innovations.
Team CardioLink presented a home device and platform for cardiac patients to manage their medications, health and healthcare. CellVax demonstrated a novel flu-vaccine production concept that does not require animals nor eggs, while C-ALL explained its wearable device for the visually impaired. Two teams focused specifically on women’s health: DensiSense, bringing a noninvasive breast self-exam device, and all-female team HeraHealth, presenting a system to monitor postpartum blood loss. Business-school team Savor also took the stage, explaining its platform to manage invoicing for small restaurants and other food businesses.
Once the judges had submitted and totaled their scores, CardioLink emerged as the winning pitcher, taking home a $10,000 top prize. DensiSense finished second, sharing a $5,000 prize, while HeraHealth placed third and will divide $2,500. Closing remarks and a reception in the Babbio atrium followed, wrapping a fun and eventful day.
Stevens innovation doesn’t stop with summer break, however. A brand new class of rising seniors will convene next fall, find teammates, select emerging challenges to tackle, crank out blueprints and workflows — then spend an entire academic year building their own unique solutions.
Those will be on display in spring 2026 at the next Innovation Expo. See you then!