Computer scientists filled the CAW Student Centre Commons with laptops on April 2, to showcase their personally crafted websites, products, and programs for the second annual Computer Science Demo Day.

Projects were presented by third-year undergraduates as well as students from the Master of Applied Computing (MAC) program. The three-hour event gave students a chance to demonstrate their work to the campus community as well as to industry, friends, and family.

“This is the perfect way to get students into top quality internships and show local industry what our students are capable of,” says Ziad Kobti, director of the School of Computer Science.

Professor Pooya Zadeh, one of the lead organizers of Demo Day, says 10 companies attended the event to take advantage of the 29 live demonstrations.

“The idea is to demonstrate who we are,” says Dr. Zadeh.  “Last year we were in the Java lab and now we had a packed event in the much larger CAW Commons, where students were able to take advantage of getting feedback from professors and directly from industry. They talked to companies about summer and future employment and networked with members from the EpiCentre — it was a great success.”

Nirali Pandya is a MAC student. She and two other students designed a ride-sharing website that she describes as a blend between Uber and a typical ride share board that connects people with an inexpensive way to travel around southwestern Ontario.

“This car sharing system is a ride search service that allows users to create an event to say they want to go from A to B, so when a user creates an event to travel from Niagara Falls to Windsor, all the users will get that notification and can easily join the event,” says Pandya. “Demo Day was a great opportunity for us to show our economically advantageous program to different IT companies.”

Sara Elliott