Projects of Impact

Designing a virtual reality classroom that provides equitable, accessible education for all students, including those with learning disabilities, was the task presented to two student teams by Thoughts Cost founder and CEO Anthony Washington Sr. 

When the project’s objectives were first presented to the teams, Sahil Unadkat, ’23, says he and his peers were “starry-eyed” but ready to step up to the challenge. Then the work began in earnest.

“The first step was research. No one on our team had any experience … working in virtual reality development,” explains Unadkat, a Computer Science major. “Our dreams were vast and we shot for the stars, creating a scope document with many different features and ambitions, including accommodating various student disabilities, creating a lab experiment for three different science disciplines, tracking student progress and more.”  

In addition to collaborating on projects that aim to solve a real-world need, the students like Unadkat learn about teamwork and communication, trial and error and the euphoric feeling when it all comes together. 

“I am grateful to have worked on a project as meaningful as this. The best part of this experience was when Anthony demoed the virtual reality lab we created for the first time,” Unadkat explains. “He had the biggest smile on his face and even got a bit emotional. It was really cool to see someone else appreciate and acknowledge the hard work we put in as a team and even cooler to just get a taste of the impact it can have.”

This work, along with projects featuring prototypes and posters to everything in between, will be on display at Projects Day, Friday, June 2, with presentations both in-person in Sullivan Hall and via Zoom.

In this second in a two-part series, we focus on projects from OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Consulting, RevereXR and Thoughts Cost. 

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Project: One-Handed Zip Tie Applier 
Sponsor: OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Consulting
Student Team: Manilyn Cabrera, Kai Chen, Sophia Coseo, Samuel Lund and Georelle Marc Matias 
Faculty Advisor: Shen Ren, PhD (assistant teaching professor/Mechanical Engineering)

Background: For OCR, the student team was tasked to design and prototype a medical zip-tie applier to replace current solutions for sealing and cutting the cystic duct during laparoscopic cholecystectomy. This device enters the body through a surgical port, attaches a zip-tie to the duct, tightens and seals it, cuts the zip-tie and then exits the body. The prototype consists of eight components, with the initial version being twice the size and having six components. Two components were omitted for initial tests. The final functional prototype, also double-sized, features a refined design, higher-quality materials and the ability to seal ducts and reload with zip-ties quickly, while capturing the zip-tie tails. This prototype serves as the final deliverable for OCR Consulting and will be used as a starting point for manufacturing. 

Students on the project had a series of surprises, or “aha moments,” as they grappled with the challenges facing them.

“Throughout the project, we were often discouraged with the complexity of it,” says Sam Lund, ‘23, a mechanical engineering major. “There were a few different points in the project where suddenly it seemed like we knew what we were doing.”

The students—Manilyn Cabrera, Kai Chen, Sophia Coseo, Georelle Marc Matias and Lund—met in the fall and at the time thought they had the entire design figured out, which came as a relief. 

“After a few months of not being sure if the device was functionally possible, I finally felt like it would work and that we could build a prototype of it,” Lund says.

The next moment came much later, after weeks of building iterations of prototypes, which were not fully functional and gave the team trouble. The device has eight different components that all need to function together and figuring out the interaction points took a lot of time and required improvements to the parts to allow them to interact with each other.

“We finally figured it out and built a prototype that was not only functional, but reliably worked,” says Lund. “It was incredibly satisfying.”

Despite the difficulty with building the prototype, it was Lund’s favorite part.

“Making small design iterations, trying to get things to work and solving problems is exactly what drove me to study engineering,” Lund says. 

Though the center of the project was design work, Lund said ultimately it is about communication and management, skills that can transfer to any line of work. 

“Learning how to efficiently talk with other engineers, but also people in industry" like OCR Medical Device Development liaison Dr. Stephen Kerr, MD, says Lund. “This will apply to my career, whether it is in engineering or not.” 

The final aha moment came as the team worked on their final presentation for Projects Day and saw the first draft of their presentation.

“I felt like we had accomplished a lot, but also could present it in a fantastic way,” says Lund. “It finally felt like we were concluding the project.”

Assistant Teaching Professor Shen Ren, PhD, the team’s faculty advisor, found himself in multiple roles on the project, but not always what one might expect. 

“Most of the time I am the cheerleader on the sidewalk to keep the team's morale and momentum rolling,” says Dr. Ren. “Sometimes I am the contact window to fill the gap of misaligned expectations between the team and the sponsor.”

Collaborative projects are important, Dr. Ren says, working hands-on with real companies, because those experiences bridge the engineering problem-solving skills learned in the classroom with a practical engineering challenge. 

“Isn't that an amazing experience to observe the process of engineering equations from the textbook transforming into a biomedical device prototype? How cool is that?”

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Project: Honoring our Storytellers Through Immersive Experience 
Sponsor: RevereXR (RVR) 
Student Team: Matthew Lau, Sarah Nguyen, Supreet Sandhu and Wesley Wong 
Faculty Advisor: Braxton Cuneo, PhD (assistant professor/Computer Science)

Background: RevereXR is a company preserving the history of Seattle’s Central District through a virtual reality (VR) experience. CEO Yolanda Barton tasked the SU team with preserving the music and cultural history of the district. Gentrification has caused significant changes, erasing parts of the community’s history and silencing generations of voices. To address this, the students built an immersive VR museum featuring two exhibits. The first exhibit shares audio and video stories from elders in the community, while the second exhibit showcases historical items. The goal: Preserve the Central District’s history and amplify the voices of the community through an immersive experience. 

To be an effective storyteller means connecting with people and places, elevating a range of voices and lived experiences. Storytellers can also be vital in helping preserve a community’s traditions while spotlighting its history and cultural significance. 

The team behind the immersive storytelling project from RevereXR, with faculty advisor Braxton Cuneo, PhD, assistant professor of Computer Science (center).

When tasked with helping preserve the music and culture of Seattle’s Central District, student team member Supreet Sandhu, ’23, became immersed in the area, learning about its rich history but also gaining an understanding of the people who call the Central District home. As a team, the task was to create an engaging and immersive museum-like experience—using virtual reality—with a combination of historical items and audio and video stories featuring community elders. 

“I think it was important to create an equitable solution that highlights and amplifies small businesses and storytellers from the community,” says Sandu, a Computer Science major, who adds that RevereXR CEO Yolanda Barton was crucial in helping the team connect with the community to gather their stories, making the virtual reality museum possible. 

These capstone projects offer students invaluable opportunities to apply what they are learning in the classroom or a lab to real-world problems facing companies that seek out their fresh perspective and talent to solve, says faculty advisor Braxton Cueno, PhD, assistant professor of Computer Science. 

“By working with real companies, students gain valuable exposure to the dynamics and challenges of the professional world,” says Cueno. “They develop essential skills like effective teamwork, client communication and managing project demands. These experiences cultivate adaptability, problem-solving abilities and professional maturity, all vital for their future careers.” 

For Sandu, the skills and knowledge gained through this project will be beneficial in her future professional pursuits. 

“We were able to learn a lot about metaverses and Unity (Technologies), which will be really helpful in my future as a software developer.”

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Project I: Virtualizing Classrooms 
Sponsor: Thoughts Cost
Student Team: Jaidan Dovala, Braedon Gipson, Akhil Kondepudi and Sahil Unadkat 
Faculty Advisor: Jason Wong (assistant teaching professor/Computer Science)

Project II: Virtualizing Classrooms 
Sponsor: Thoughts Cost 
Student Team: Khoszaya Erdenebat, Sean Li, Connor MacKenzie, Haley Richardson and Savanna Ton 
Faculty Advisor: Jason Wong (assistant teaching professor/Computer Science)

Background: Thoughts Cost aims to promote fairness and equity in education by assisting special education teachers in individualizing their curriculum based on students’ Individual Education Program (IEP) goals. This project involved two student teams tasked with creating a virtual reality (VR) classroom experience that provides equitable education for all students, including those who are unable to physically attend resource-rich classes. In addition to designing a VR classroom tailored for students with invisible disabilities, the SU students also developed a guided science experiment with features such as concept checks, video input, auditory stimuli and haptic feedback. This program allows students to interact with virtual objects in a lab setting, promoting safe exploration of new topics and fostering positive learning outcomes.

Thoughts Cost’s “visionary project,” as student team member Savanna Ton, ’23, describes it, was steeped in collaboration between the teams and the sponsor. 

“We had to discuss with our sponsor how to define the details of what they had envisioned the project to be. We also had to do our own individual research in highlighting aspects of certain technologies to our sponsor to give them a better picture as well,” says Ton, a Computer Science major. “Our sponsor has been very patient and willing to learn about the variety of solutions we can offer him and very attentive on the capabilities we can produce in the project as well as excited that it can be put into reality.”

Two SU student teams worked on the creation of a virtual reality-based classroom for Thoughts Cost.

Like Ton, Unadkat agrees that the sponsor-student partnership was both rewarding and impactful. 

“It’s been enjoyable to work with our sponsor, Anthony Washington. He offers a diverse set of experiences and we all were able to learn a lot from his background of being a professional basketball player to making the shift to the world of education,” says Unadkat, who adds that this project was similar to creating a start-up. “Anthony is open-minded and a learner at heart, so it’s been a rewarding experience working with him and manifesting his ideas into fruition.”

Ton’s favorite aspect of this project was the research and discovery that was tapped into in the virtual reality space. Says Ton, “It has been great to explore this new horizon of VR development as it is a relatively new industry.” 

Faculty advisor Jason Wong says his role was to provide technical guidance and experience, helping the students through development and ensuring they “have all the tools and learning necessary to successfully deliver on the project.” 

“The mentorship and experience gained by students working with sponsors during their capstone projects enable them to be impactful immediately upon graduation and hit the ground running as they enter their professional lives,” says Wong, an assistant teaching professor of Computer Science.

Through this experience, Ton feels confident taking on projects and any challenges that may come post-graduation, knowing that “there will be solutions to solve the problem ahead no matter the bumps and walls I will encounter along the way.”

After graduation Unadkat will be working as a software engineer at Amazon and says the skills gained working on this project will likely be useful in this role. 

“I can safely say this experience has been a reformative one, where it refined aspects of my character and equipped me with new skills I can take to future endeavors,” Unadkat says. “This project reassured me as it reinforced my decision to study Computer Science and create technology that truly has a meaningful impact.”

Learn more about the Project Center and Projects Day.