Students graduating from numerous programs in the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology gathered in the Barrett Centre For Technology Innovation to display their final projects.
Their projects all involved them being given a sponsor and a problem then they work with that sponsor to create a project that solves or helps with the problem.
Carl Oliver, the associate dean for the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology, said this event allows the students to show off what they’ve learned in their programs and what they could bring to a career.
“This event is really to help remind them of their accomplishments and their applicability to the industry and the jobs that they’ll be doing when they graduate,” he said.
Francis Syms, associate dean for the Department of Information and Communications Technology, said this is the largest capstone expo Humber has hosted.
“This is the largest Capstone Expo that we’ve had at the college, we have over 140 projects, showcased here and over 80 partners and judges. It represents a lot of work that the students have done,” Syms said.
Carl Oliver said he’s noticed many of the projects focus on positive change to improve a company’s sustainability or make a process in that organization safer than focusing on profit.
“So it really seems like they’ve adopted the mindset of using technology to improve the world rather than to make more of something or to make more money,” he said.
Gurjeet Sandhu in the Computer Systems Technician program, was one of the people who worked on an app that educates students on environmental issues by linking them to news stories, calculating their carbon footprint and a chat function to allow them to organize more effectively.
Sandhu said the app he and his team have worked on would help people learn more about the environment and the impact they have on it.
“In this room, there are 10 people, eight of them don’t know their carbon footprint, but even in the back of your head if you’re aware of it, the app will motivate you to reduce it,” he said.
Sandhu said after an environmental course in his program he got inspired by his professor’s displays of environmentalism in the classes and his team based the app around it.
“After we took the course, we were really motivated by what the professor wanted us to be,” he said. “The class was really interactive, the professor showed us different kinds of tools in the class and every second class.
“He showed us some really interesting things, like graphical displays of the environment to make us more aware, so we tried to put it all together through our app,” Sandhu said.
Leon Czarlinski's project is called AdaptIt and allows clinics to keep track of staff patients to keep track of appointments and doctors to keep track of treatments Photo credit: David Madureira
Leon Czarlinski, a student in the Information Technology Solutions program, said his team’s project is called AdaptIt, a website for clinics to organize their patients, appointments and staff effectively.
“They can manage everything that they have in the clinic that needs to be managed, appointments, receptionists and clock-ins. It’s hard for them to manage all of this and this is one place for them to manage it all together,” Czarlinski said.
He said the patients will have access to the website and to review their appointments with the doctors and vice versa.
“They can keep track of their treatments alongside the doctors and for the doctor side, it’s also the same, they can track the patients, their medical records and treatments,” Czarlinski said.
Syms said participants should feel proud of what they’ve done and said it was a testament to what people can do when they collaborate.
“You should feel a sense of pride for being somebody living in Toronto,” he said. “We have a community of students that have come internationally to work together to solve things that the industry needs locally, this is a real show of collaboration and what we could do when we all work together.”