In the Capstone Project course (ISBA 4797), students build a portfolio-worthy project to solve a real business problem by integrating business and technical knowledge and skills. For employers, it represents a clear snapshot of a student’s understanding of the subject matter and their ability to identify a meaningful project and exercise initiative. It also presents students with first-hand experience to develop project management, teamwork, and communication skills critical for an IT career. 

For employers interested in collaborating on a capstone project, please email ISBA.outreach@lmu.edu.

Recent Projects

Project Name: Gridsync

Student Team: Nick Slanec, Jack Marfice and Julien Tai-Beauchamp

Project Description: This capstone project developed GridSync, an application that provides an easy-to-use, low-cost, and decentralized disaster coordination solution to an under-resourced response. The students worked with databases used to store location information to be later visualized, app development for map visualization and communication between users, and programming languages such as frontend and backend languages and libraries to develop a web app. GridSync's database was created through LMU.build, which is a resource provided by LMU that allows students to host webpages and databases for free. Along with this, they used many frontend (HTML, JavaScript, CSS) and backend (PHP, SQL) programming languages throughout their project. To learn more about this project, watch the highlight video.

Nick Slanec '21
Junior Data Engineer at Kiosk

"GridSync was a real passion project for me, combining my interest in disaster response with the skills we learned in the major. The idea of practical application of technology to solve problems was a big reason why I was an AIMS major, and it felt really satisfying and exciting to know that the software we were making could potentially save lives."
Jack Marfice '21
Data Analyst at General Motors

“GridSync was one of the most fun and challenging projects I worked on at LMU. The development of GridSync as a web app required me to utilize and learn various web development technologies and most importantly, the principles of Agile development. This proved to be extremely valuable during the duration of the project and in my current position at General Motors, where my team uses an Agile methodology in the development of GM's online car sales platform.”

Project Name: QuantFin

Student Team: Zach Boehnlein, Nathan Mark and Jordon Soldo

Project Description: This capstone project worked with a company called QuantFin in the investment sector. Students wanted to increase the access of financial data to the public and provide hands-off investing performance for the financial markets. To do this, they used their ISBA backgrounds and worked with algorithms (automation of investing activities), cloud infrastructure (automating pipelines in the cloud for cheap), and API creation (making data sources more user-friendly). They learned how to use their programming and analytical knowledge to apply it to a real-world setting and pick up many lessons of improvement along the way. To learn more about the project, watch the highlight video

Jordan Soldo '21
Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS)

"I decided to work on QuantFin because I wanted to minimize the stress of investing, while also creating a way that gives normal people access to premium financial data for free. Due to the nature of the project, I was able to develop my skills in serverless cloud architecture to create an application that could handle a great magnitude of traffic."

Project Name: Northrop Grumman

Student: Zack Haire

Project Description: This capstone project collaborated with Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor working on land, air, naval, and cyber weaponry. Zach created an inspection budget to solve the problem of the company being unsure of the exact costs of project phases, which leads to creating uncertainty when generating proposal estimates and staffing assignments. Through a combination of business/financial analytics, data engineering, and programming languages, he explains how he could use all these tools to come to a solution. To see his approach and learn more about the project, watch the highlight video.