Spring 2025 Capstone Showcase Raises the Bar for Record Success
The spring 2025 Capstone Showcase has set a new benchmark for ingenuity, strategic thinking and record-breaking attendance. NJIT’s signature applied learning experience has now become an inspirational model for other high-caliber universities to emulate.
The annual capstone showcases are the culmination of final projects required of all Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC) seniors prior to embarking on the next phase of their professional growth, either in industry or as continuing students pursuing advanced degrees.
Each capstone team has the option to work on sponsor company or organization assigned proposals, choose the CISCO entrepreneurship track (using CISCO based platforms) for solving problems in network and information security, or create their own entrepreneurial business solutions.
This year’s final semester showcase required two full days of presentations (for the first time) in the student center ballroom to accommodate 84 teams, 417 student presenters and 32 industry judges from leading companies across 10 judging panels – and still the venue was filled to capacity with myriad demonstration tables and hundreds of families, friends and eager tech experts hoping to find the next great solution to one of business and society’s greatest challenges.
“This event, without exaggeration, has surpassed anything I’ve seen at NJIT in over two decades of student-centered programs,” said Osama Eljabiri, senior university lecturer and director of the Capstone program.
Among the guests were professors, sponsors and alumni from some of the New York metro area’s most recognized peer institutions, including Columbia, NYU, Steven’s Tech, Rutgers and Pace.
“My esteemed colleagues who attended expressed deep admiration for the program’s structure and impact. Their remarks reaffirmed that what we’ve built here is not only working – it’s setting a new standard. We are now a model recognized across the region,” Eljabiri continued.
NJIT alumni and other supporters have also become judges, sponsors and capstone project sites, including Devang Doshi, senior software engineer for Microsoft, who acted as a judge, and Elisa Charters, sponsor and founder of Juego.Juegos, who also serves on NJIT’s Board of Trustees.
In addition to internships and co-ops, many students will find their first job directly through their capstone experience, as was the case for alumni Davetivo Weaver ‘23 and Surya Halwasia M.S. ’25, both of whom work as backend developers at Juego.Juegos with Charters.
Top Winning Teams by Category
First Place – Start-Up Track: BuildBuddy (Cole Abney, Dela Rosa, Ethan Ho, Daniel Sarmiento)
First Place – Cisco Networking Track: AI-Based Phishing Detection System (Omar Barrera, Gerard Bevere, Mohammad Kiyam, Jared Mitchell)
First Place – Industry Sponsored Projects: AI-Driven Negotiation for Consumer Lending – Cognute, Inc. (Ashutosh Chalise, Prahasith Tirunagari, Sai Praneth Mutyala, Hitesh Buereddy)
First Place – Immersive Technologies: Enhancing Emergency Care Training – Pace/NJIT (Mike Gabriel Ayson, Rainer Frickanisce, Charles Espulgar, Heather Rabanes, Irtaza Azhar)
First Place – Entrepreneurship and Innovation: CleanQuity – Center for Student Entrepreneurship (Daniel Yankovich, Rahav Dayan, Andrew Mohan, Eric Cacdac, Yash Mandal)
First Place – Corporate Innovation: Portfolio Management Integration – Merck (Sofia Usmani, Truong Dang, Daniel Helmer, Andrew Boksz)
NJIT and the Ying Wu College of Computing gratefully acknowledge 2025 presenting sponsor Databank for supporting student professional development and innovation.