Academics · May 1, 2026
Senior Design Expo Fills the Fieldhouse With 71 Client Projects
A vision-inspection cell built for a regional cabinet maker took best in show; at least nine students left with job offers made on the floor.
The 2026 Senior Design Expo filled Ironclad Fieldhouse on Wednesday with 71 teams and 318 graduating students from every engineering and computing program, showing projects built over one or two semesters to the specifications of real clients. Organizers counted about 2,100 visitors, including 44 sponsoring companies, public agencies and nonprofits.
Best in show went to a five-student manufacturing and electrical engineering team that built a camera-based inspection cell for a Porter County cabinet manufacturer. The cell checks hinge-bore placement on cabinet doors at line speed and flags rejects before finishing, a step the plant had been doing by eye. The company has already moved the prototype onto a production line and says it expects to cut finishing-stage scrap by about a third.
Other awards
- Client’s choice: a software engineering team’s scheduling app for the Porter Falls Area School District’s bus routes
- Best community project: an accessible fishing-platform design for the Riverfront Trail, completed for the city parks department
- Best interdisciplinary team: a packaging, plastics and industrial design group that redesigned a shipping tray for frozen cheese curds to use 40 percent less material
- Best poster: a computer engineering team’s low-power soil moisture network for the University Farm
Industry judges scored each team on a design review held the week before. On the floor, at least nine students reported receiving job offers, and several sponsors signed up for next year before the event closed.
“Every one of these teams had a client who could say no. That is the whole point. You can watch students stop presenting to a professor and start presenting to the person who has to live with what they built.”
— Dr. Karen Bergstrom, dean of the College of Engineering & Technology
Most projects are built in the senior design labs in Founders Hall. Companies interested in proposing a 2026–27 project should see sponsoring a capstone project; proposals are due August 15. Students can read how the two-semester sequence works in the senior capstone overview.
Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. The teams, sponsors, awards and job offers are invented, and no cabinet doors were inspected.