On May 26, seniors of the Edison High School STEM Academy presented their years’ worth of work to an audience of STEM students, teachers, and supervisors. 

The Capstone Presentations began with individual presentations followed by a short question-and-answer period. Once all the capstones were presented, the STEM students visited the Capstone Expo, where they could interact with the capstone projects and ask further questions.

These capstone projects were proposed during May of last year, while most students were still attending virtually. “Since we proposed these capstones during quarantine, a lot of our capstones had an underlying theme of COVID-19,” said Ishani Kunadharaju ‘22.

“I liked how these capstones were more relevant to the general population. For example, the mirror capstone can be used by anyone, and I can actually imagine myself using it. Even the paint for the sneakers, I would save a lot of money with my kids just taking the paint, washing it off, and reusing. These are practical ideas that the kids are creating, and they are very hands-on,” said STEM Academy Supervisor Ms. Kristen Tsaoys. 

“Just seeing the passion that the students put into their projects, let alone make it look so easy,” said Chief Academic Officer Ms. Gail Palikowski. “We believe this kind of learning is the best kind of learning, and seeing the purpose of connecting to real life, that’s how kids learn best and develop their skills. And these are the skills that everyone needs to be successful. This is how learning should be. You bring in all the content you learn, all the math, the writing skills, the engineering, and all the other subjects, and when you bring that all together to solve a problem or create, that’s what it is all about. The capstone is what it is meant to be, the culminating activity of all the skills you learn.” 

The presented projects were:

The Expansion

Arnav Chinchankar ‘22 and Aditya Modi ‘22 designed and built a cost-effective monitor that attaches to a laptop in order to address the increasing need for screen area caused by quarantine and the remote work environment.

Drone Imaging Trash Collection 

Yash Mandavia ‘22 and Pranav Chundi ‘22 programmed a drone to detect the location of trash over bodies of water and assign waypoints in order to address water pollution.

Walkify 

Sahil Desai ‘22 and Abhinav Arya ‘22 modified crutches, aiming to reduce discomfort caused by the use of traditional crutches. They designed a spring system that reduces the amount of pressure the user must exert and increases their range of motion while reducing underarm soreness through a memory foam and cooling gel padding system.

InSight – Comfort for the Mind

Srinija Devaraju ‘22 and Anne Lee ‘22 created a mobile application which focused on tracking and identifying patterns of mood and depression for those struggling with mental health. InSight offers a variety of features such as daily questions aimed to detect patterns and digital notepad for self-expression. 

AVRS – Mobile Cigarette App

Shouvik Ghosh ‘22 created a habit tracking application designed initially for cigarette and vape addictions that was then generalized for habit-building.

Safety Recognition Lock

Subhakrith Paluvoi ’22 and Mukund Raghavendran ’22 created a system that utilizes a computer vision model and temperature sensor in order to detect whether a user is wearing a mask and whether the user’s temperature is in an acceptable range. Once these conditions were passed, a prototype door unlocked. 

Shoe Stuff

Harsh Parekh ‘22 designed washable paint for shoes in order to allow for further customization for different events. 

AI Mirror 

Rusheen Patel ‘22 and Mukul Kallam ‘22 built and programmed a cost-effective and customizable mirror with a digital display behind the glass. Using Raspberry Pi, they programmed the mirror to display widgets for time, weather, current events, and interactive prompts.

Is It In Stock?

Vignesh Vasudevan ‘22 created an application that allows a user to input links of certain products and the application will send the user an email when the product is in stock.

Optiflight

Srinidhi Venkatesh ‘22 and Ishani Kunadharaju ‘22 created a website for amateur drone flyers to upload a video of their drone flight and receive feedback for future drone flights.

Space Voyager

Ali Ahmed ‘22 and Jason Zheng ‘22 created a cost-efficient telescope targeted for high school students’ use in order to increase young interest in astronomy.

Emotispeach

Vasumathi Venkat ‘22 created a machine learning model to detect a user’s emotions from a 5-7 second video of them speaking.