School of Computing Celebrates 2026 Senior Design Day Winners
The School of Computing is proud to recognize the outstanding student teams honored at the 2026 Computer Science and Engineering Senior Design Day. Each year, Senior Design Day highlights the creativity, technical skill, teamwork, and problem-solving abilities of graduating students as they present projects that address real-world challenges through computing.
This year’s winning teams demonstrated excellence across a range of innovative projects, from personalized health-aware recommendation systems to smart health technologies and tools that improve the dining experience. The School of Computing congratulates all participating teams and extends special recognition to the students, advisors, and sponsors of this year’s award-winning projects.
First Place: Team 35
Improving Healthiness in a Multi-Objective Personalized Health-Aware Food Recommendation System using Advantage Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning Networks
Team 35 earned first place for improving a food recommendation system that helps suggest meals based not only on what users may like, but also on their personal health goals and the nutritional variety of their choices.
Instead of choosing all recommendations at once, their system builds a list one item at a time, allowing it to make better overall suggestions.
By using machine learning methods that learn from each decision, the team showed how food recommendation tools can become more personalized, health-conscious, and useful.
Team Members: Vishal Saminathan, Joshua Zolla, Daniel Bogues, Harshit Yadav, and Aarya Vasantlal
Advisor: Dr. Chuxu Zhang
Sponsor: Dr. Chuxu Zhang
Second Place: Team 24
SmaRt heaRt
Team 24 received second place for their portable heart-monitoring device and web application designed to make cardiac health data easier to collect and share with doctors. Their system measures heart rate variability, an important signal used to assess heart health, and sends the data to a physician or cardiologist for review. By improving the device’s accuracy and streamlining how data is transmitted, the team’s work supports more accessible, real-time patient monitoring.
Team Members: Imra Asif, Tony He, Isabella Morfin, and Eric Wang
Advisor: Dr. Dong-Guk Shin
Sponsor: Dr. Sharad Jaitly
Third Place: Team 56
MenuMatch
Team 56 earned third place for their mobile app that helps UConn students track nutrition in dining halls by taking a photo of their meal. The app uses AI to identify the foods on a student’s plate, estimate portion sizes, and match the meal to dining hall menu information. It then provides a nutrition summary, including calories, protein, fats, and carbohydrates, making it easier for students to understand their meals without manually entering each item.
Team Members: Alex Manos, Yaohui Liu, Josef Karpinski, and Himanshu Thakur
Advisor: Dr. Wei Wei
Sponsor: UConn School of Computing
Congratulations to All Participants
Senior Design Day represents the culmination of two semesters of hard work, collaboration, and technical development. The School of Computing congratulates the winning teams and all students who presented their projects at the 2026 event. Their achievements reflect the talent, dedication, and creativity of UConn’s computing students and the continued impact of hands-on, project-based learning.
We also thank the faculty advisors, sponsors, mentors, and judges who supported this year’s projects and helped make Senior Design Day a meaningful celebration of student innovation.
Congratulations again to Teams 35, 24, and 56 on their outstanding accomplishments.