Entire Computing Capstone Project Team Hired by Corporate Sponsor

Many Capstone projects, proposed by a company and performed by a team of students as a senior-year course requirement in the Ying Wu College of Computing, are successful enough to be developed further by the sponsoring company. On occasion, a student or two will be fortunate enough to receive an employment offer from the company as a result of their good work. It is far less common, however, for an entire Capstone team, let alone two entire Capstone teams of the same semester and sponsor, to be hired – and made full partners in the company.

Such is the case for eight students whose Eco-Strategy Client Sustainability Portal 3.0 (Front End and Backend) capstone teams’ innovation so impressed Eco-Enterprise CEO & Founder, Lindsey Nagy, that he offered them all equity partnerships to join his company at the end of the Spring 2022 project.

Eco-Enterprise, Inc. drives sustainability for companies, nonprofits and governments in cost-effective ways using unique financial solutions and cutting-edge technology.

Recent YWCC graduates: Hrithik Chaudhary, Justin Oestreich, Nicholas Hoffman, Denis Smirnov, Harshil Shah, Najm Hassan, John Sedillo and the team’s project manager, Max Cohen, have quickly transitioned from students to entrepreneurs in a new venture out of Eco-Enterprise which, although still in “stealth mode”, can be loosely described as “Gamifying work for onsite and remote-based professionals to help companies meet and exceed revenue goals post-pandemic,” according to Nagy.

Nagy’s interest in the team started from the day they were awarded the project on the spot following the first interview. “My teammates and I immediately understood what the company wanted,” said Cohen.

The student teams proposed a solution that would prove to be more dynamic in scope for the future, effect better data control and offer fully-owned software PTS forms for Eco-Enterprise’s “gamified corporate sustainability strategy portal” offered to clients in need of a roadmap for improving environmental sustainability and enterprise efficiency.

The front-end team re-created the editor to the admin portal, and the back-end team utilized this planning to design a custom JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).

Nagy and Eco-Enterprise are not new to the YWCC capstone project course. Previous versions of Eco-Strategy were developed in capstone projects in past semesters. YWCC alum Kyle Middleton participated in the development of version 2.0 in his spring 2020 capstone project and now consults for Eco-Enterprise via his own company, Grade 8 Technologies.

Alumnus Surindra Boodhoo was hired by Eco-Enterprise to program unique HVAC APIs using IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) and blockchain technology after his capstone project with the company in Summer 2021. Alum Mingqi Zhang, who participated in Capstone Fall 2021, was brought onboard to develop the company’s solar power calculator after he graduated NJIT and moved to the West Coast, and Christian Zoufaly has an ongoing working relationship with the company following his Fall 2019 Capstone project and graduation.

Lastly, and certainly not least, alums Samarth Desai and Karan Singh, who placed first in their spring 2020 Capstone project: Eco-System Smart City Building Automation System, successfully helped their team to decipher and program vital industry-specific code (BACnet) to connect building machinery APIs to Eco-System's platform. After subsequently interning with Eco-Enterprise, Desai was hired to develop for Amazon, and Singh, well-versed in a variety of programming languages, managed solutions for Picatinny Arsenal and is now a software engineer at JP Morgan Chase.

A new summer 2022 Capstone team will continue development of Eco-Strategy. “We anticipate Eco-Strategy 4.0 will allow for the implementation of additional enhancements that my capstone team outlined for calculating solar power usage and measuring an organization’s carbon footprint,” said Middleton.

Nagy views NJIT and its Capstone program as “a family of wizards” and is eager to continue the already successful relationship with the university and its many forward-thinking students.

Of his latest crop, he remarked, “Max [Cohen] is more than an employee; He’s a friend. He and his peers led their Capstone project with impeccable intelligence, skill, communication and integrity. I know I can expect great things from all of them on our future journey together.”