Computer Science students showcase innovation in action
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Several students in the Computer Science Department finished off the semester in the spotlight.
Throughout the spring semester, two student teams worked with professionals at The Hartford to develop AI-powered conversational vehicle recommendation prototypes using AWS Bedrock, large language models, cloud services, and vehicle safety data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The Computer Science Department has a longtime educational partnership with The Hartford through its Software Engineering Studio.
“Our partnership with The Hartford has been one of the most consistent and meaningful examples of how industry engagement can strengthen computing education,” says Dr. Stan Kurkovsky, chair of the Computer Science Department. “Since 2018, The Hartford professionals have worked with our students every semester on realistic software engineering projects, giving them a chance to apply what they learn in class to authentic professional practice.”
The project focused on creating an AI-powered conversational vehicle recommendation tool capable of interacting with users, retrieving and interpreting structured safety data, and generating personalized recommendations through a natural language interface.
Over four development sprints, the teams worked directly with engineers and technical leaders from The Hartford, gradually turning a broad project concept into functioning prototypes that were demonstrated to stakeholders at the end of the semester.
Central’s teams included the Computational Collective, made up of Lucas Muse, Vincent Randolph, Nikhil Patel, Erick Cardenas, and the Visionary Vortex, with members Kate Luci, Mendjola Koprencka, and Vincent Quijano.
Even better, Central’s teams learned from fellow Blue Devils and Hartford staffers Matt Gosselin, Kevin Moore, Anthony Brignano, and Ariana Edgar — all proud Central Computer Science alumni.
Senior showcase standouts
Meanwhile, Daniel Polgun, Yulming Lee, Gjin Rexhaj, and Ramsundhar Venkadesan — Team VYPR — took the top spot in the annual Computer Science Senior Project Showcase.
For its project, Team VYPR focused on collecting and visualizing large amounts of real-time data from an industrial ABB robot system used in aerospace inspection research. Their software removes limitations in ABB’s built-in monitoring tools and opens the door for future work in adaptive scanning, diagnostics, and multi-sensor inspection research.
The team had to work with industrial robotics hardware, a proprietary software development kit and tooling, real-time data acquisition, live visualization, and an unfamiliar technology stack while building a standalone system from scratch.
“This was a real engineering problem, not a classroom simulation,” Kurkovsky noted. “The students had to deal with messy integration issues, evolving requirements, hardware constraints, and the realities of building software around physical systems.”
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