Capstone design projects represent the culmination of undergraduate engineering training in UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. In these team-based projects, fourth-year students apply their technical knowledge and professional skills to tackle real-world challenges, often in partnership with external stakeholders. Through a structured design process — from identifying needs to delivering tested solutions — students demonstrate their abilities in engineering, communication, collaboration, and teamwork. Capstones prepare students for success in their chosen professions.
This course represents a two-semester capstone experience where groups of students bring together their entire curricular coursework and laboratory skills to develop solutions to a major engineering design problem. Engineering challenges are submitted in the form of proposals from industrial stakeholders and down selected by students within this rigorous engineering design experience, reflective of contemporary professional practice. During the course of a year, the students undertake an aggressive iterative - design - proposal process followed by execution in both experiential and computational forms.
Photos by Professor Jim Fitz-Gerald.
