The School of Computer Science and Engineering held an undergraduate project showcase on 28 June 2023 in collaboration with international IT company Netcompany. During the event, ten students from across the School presented their final year projects to the panel of six IT industry professionals from the company, including technical managers, senior consultants and developers.
Each project tackled a different problem in society, using the latest tools and technologies in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Cyber Security, Mobile and Web. They included an app which helps students find peers with common interests, a robot arm that aids recycling, and a software that makes digital art creation available and accessible to all.
The ten finalists were picked out of 250 final-year projects. The student projects were nominated by their supervisors and the ten were shortlisted by a panel of academics within the School. The criteria for selection included originality, technical difficulty, implementation quality and social impact. All ten students were recognised and received a certificate and prize for their projects, with judges from Netcompany picking the best three.
Shannon Honan, a Computer Science BSc Honours student, took home first place with her project Cloud-Based Deep Learning Approach to the Classification of Breast Ultrasound Images. Her project outlines a website that can be used by medical professionals to upload a breast ultrasound image. The model processes the image and gives a classification label of either normal, benign or malignant, with an added score on the confidence of the classification decision. The application would be used as an additional diagnostic tool for radiologists, to help resolve the issues of human error and decrease the number of preventable cases with quick and early diagnosis of breast cancer.
Software Engineering BEng Honours student Piotr Stanny scooped up second place for his fitness app Quantfit. The app focuses on long term fitness management and tracks various fitness activities such as cardio, cycling and going to the gym all in one place. Users can create a profile to test their current fitness and track their progress. They can also access educational content to help them understand their fitness journey.
Taking home the third spot was Data Science and Analytics BSc Honours student Maciej Sulecki. He was awarded the prize for his Tool and Technologies Research guide (TTR.guide), which helps people find out more about potential jobs by providing information about roles such as the median salary, popularity and whether its remote, office or hybrid. It also puts all data and analytics on the tools and technologies used within specific industries onto an easy to view platform.
The panel also crowned Software Engineering BEng Honours student, Rathnayaka Kaduruwewa, with the Social Impact prize for his project that aims to improve web accessibility. He created Your Access, a user-friendly tool that allows users to adapt websites to their specific accessibility needs, from adjusting text sizes and colour contrast to disabling auto play on websites. The tool caters for a broad range of accessibility needs such as offering screen readers for those who are visually impaired, a readable font for those with dyslexia and a larger cursor for people with motor disabilities, paving the way for a more inclusive web experience. Your Access hopes to save web developers time and save companies money as accessibility is often seen as an additional time-consuming expense.
The day ended with a party where first- and second-year students came to celebrate with their peers and be inspired by their work.
It is the second time the showcase was held in collaboration with Netcompany, an international consultancy who offer end-to-end IT services from development through to maintenance and operations.
Along with collaborating with this event, the company has also provided a live project as part of a module for second-year students and has offered a year-long industrial placement to a second-year student from the Computer Science BSc course.
First prize winner Shannon Honan said: "Taking part in the competition and presenting my work to industry professionals was incredibly rewarding. It provided validation, feedback and valuable insights. The experience allowed me to showcase my abilities, build credibility and network, and I'm very happy with the outcome!"
One of the judges Bakara Ovietabore, a Technical Manager at Netcompany, said: “The Netcompany Awards were a fantastic showcase of the talent of Westminster University. With students delivering demos of their projects with real value to society. Students showed an excellent domain knowledge in a variety of subjects like health, accessibility and security. What impressed on the day was the clear passion from students and the thought they put into the viability of their solutions in the commercial world.”
Huseyin Dagdeviren, Senior Lecturer and Director of Employability at the University of Westminster who led the event, added: “The atmosphere was fantastic with a lot of useful interactions among students and Netcompany employees. This type of events is very useful for students to reinforce and develop their skills. I thoroughly enjoyed the event. It was a great way to end the academic year and celebrate the hard work of students.”
Find out more about Computer Science and Engineering courses at the University of Westminster.
Shannon Honan winning her first place award
Christopher K C Wong showcasing his project to Netcompany expert
Cristiano Silva showing his project to his fellow students
Rathnayaka Kaduruwewa winning the Social Impact award
Piotr Stanny telling the group about his project
