Computing Students Provide Real-World Solutions for Bank of America in Capstone Project

Capstone projects, done in collaboration with companies, are a requirement for every senior in the Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC) at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), but two teams of students have exceeded expectations with a pair of solutions that Bank of America (BofA) counts as more than class projects.  

These technical innovations, which relate to the BofA workforce and customer satisfaction, were NJIT’s first assignment with the multinational investment bank. The results were met with such high praise that continuation projects are already in the works. Phase two of the customer satisfaction project is underway by a new student team as their Capstone project in the spring 2022 semester.

Osama Eljabiri, senior university lecturer and director of the Capstone program, explained “our corporate sponsors submit proposals to find solutions for issues on which they place great importance. The client-student relationship is mutually beneficial: students get real-world experience and clients are able to utilize our hands-on education and training to positively impact their operations. On top of that, a relationship is formed between the two, sometimes resulting in future employment.”

Unlike most Capstone projects, however, where the sponsor interviews student teams to staff the project, BofA elected to allow Eljabiri to assign students on his own. “I selected students I knew I could trust to work with this new and important client. Now I think Bank of America will stay with NJIT for the long-term,” he said.

The timeline for Capstone projects is approximately three months. In that time, student teams must submit weekly project reports and give monthly presentations to an executive board comprised of advanced leadership and technical peers. This is followed by a series of two-week “sprints” culminating in submitting practical deliverables to the sponsor. During the process, teams are mentored and guided throughout by fellow students, faculty and company mentors.

The goal of the workforce project was to use data science to help improve collaborative workflows and life balance across different time zones in Europe and the U.S. The end result will be a scheduling model that could help predict the future of the global workforce. 

The workforce team consisted of seniors Jeremy Pamposa, Emily Marzano, and Philip Poretsky. Each member was assigned tasks based on their specialization, with Pamposa acting as project lead and liaison. He said the entire process challenged the team to improve their ability to develop methods of capturing information and presenting it as data sets that would be used to create a salient solution for the future.

“I really wanted this project,” Pamposa said. “This is the first big thing I’ve done. I felt a combination of relief and pride in what we achieved, and now I want to keep going on and on!”

The customer satisfaction project was led by seniors Anuja Badeti, Mahi Gada and Yu Gu. Badeti and Gada were already long-time friends, which helped in building a strong working relationship and common language for problem solving.

According to Badeti, the project objective was to find a way to better utilize means of communication to measure customer sentiments for services and projects. Using data visualization, histograms were created to streamline analysis of sentiments by hour, month and year-over-year.

Badeti echoed Pamposa’s feeling of relief when the project was completed. “This was not just learning for learning, not just about getting an ‘A.’ This was about the joy of working on something I am truly interested in and seeing my work recognized in industry,” she said.

Being just prototypes, the projects must still be engineered to industry-grade software by BofA to be integrated into the company’s business systems in the future.

While some of the students on the BofA projects have yet to begin their professional careers, Badeti and Gada have already been offered positions as software engineers for Bloomberg and VMware, respectively, upon graduation. “Bloomberg has so many wonderful opportunities for growth. My entire NJIT experience, particularly this Bank of America Capstone project, has definitely prepared me to bring my best to this rewarding new position,” Badeti said.