Seniors match with capstone projects at Design Day Open House

More than 400 College of Engineering seniors investigated 66 Interdisciplinary Capstone projects at Craig M. Berge Design Day Open House — capstone projects that will lead them toward graduation and a career. Students met with 111 sponsors representing 38 companies at this year's open house. 

Steve Larimore, lead instructor for the Interdisciplinary Capstone program, updated sponsors on artificial intelligence guidelines, explaining that students are encouraged to use AI tools for identifying similar projects and engineering standards.

“It is a way to do these projects faster and more accurately, gaining better results in the process,” he said.

Several sponsors have already incorporated AI into their design requirements. Freeport-McMoRan is sponsoring a software development project that uses AI to model data collection automation for the mining company’s leaching process. Leaching is a chemical process that separates copper from ore.

“Our current process for collecting data for our leaching program is manual, and that worked great when we had 10 samples, but now we have over 100,” said Joanna Robertson, Freeport-McMoRan’s director of metal recovery.

”It's good to get a fresh perspective on this problem, and these engineering students are some of the brightest minds around.”