In the Senior Engineering Research Seminar course at Ramapo, seniors are hard at work developing projects set to be finalized in April. In groups of four, these students are taking part in very interesting and complex research. 

In one group, studying Artificial Intelligence, group member Mahad Rana, “Everyone in this class is part of the Engineering UP. I became interested in engineering when I was younger, for my uncle showed me the Apple iPhone and I was just in awe, that is how I got into tech.”

With a program that is better at filtering fake reviews, customers will have a more realistic understanding of the quality of the products that they are researching or purchasing. 

Utilizing an artificial intelligence program and several algorithms in the programming language Python, the team aims to create a utility that will analyze product reviews and other data to determine whether or not reviews are authentic in hope to create an easy-to-use user interface that works on a variety of different websites. Through this process, they hope to learn more about AI and computer science. 

In the second group, studying biomimicry, group member Matt Latronica says “We chose this project because it is a new engineering field that copies the innovation of nature. I am going to be majoring in biomedical engineering, reflecting similar research conducted in our project.”  

There is currently no efficient tool to quickly and orderly create small markings. The second team, researching biomimicry, will be making an electronic tool with fine-tune joints, to cut mortises, shave rough surfaces, or simply shape complex objects with many twists and turns. By implementing the concept of biomimicry, they are able to analyze what designs have worked in nature.

The last two groups, studying computer engineering and agricultural engineering, group member Matt Westrich, researching computer engineering, remarks “for this project, we decided to go with something that we had prior experience, since each group member has experience with computers and at least eight years of experience with engineering. Everyone in the group was pretty confident going into it, since we had a lot of the basic knowledge already which had allowed us to put this project on the fast track.”

In the final group, studying agricultural engineering, members Charlotte Cannizzo and Kendra Phillips explain  “We chose this aquaponics system to work on because we wanted to work on possible agricultural sustainability. The project involves nutrients in a fish tank and four other outside nutrients to add in, which create a sustainable agricultural environment. To test this environment, we are going to grow peppers using the nutrients from the fish and the added chemicals, instead of soil, in a large series of pipes to help deliver the nutrients, which is more sustainable as opposed to nutrient-filled soil.”