This month, I had the honor of interviewing some of our incredible students in Cohort 39! Dressed in their finest attire and equipped with their brightest smiles at the QUEST Conference on May 6th, Cohort 39 did an incredible job on their capstone projects.

Cohort 39 at the QUEST Conference.

Arti Dhareshwar worked on the Alpine Rewards project this semester. She said she loved getting to know her team over the course of the semester. Dhareshwar and her team worked tirelessly on their poster for hours in McKeldin, perfecting every last detail. She said that the culmination of her work in QUEST really paid off, but that it’s bittersweet as well. “If there’s one thing I know I can do, it’s present, and that’s all thanks to QUEST!”

Dhareshwar (third from right) and her team at the conference.

Valeria Salas-Dietz and her team worked on improving the marketing system for Warrior Centric Health. She said that the semester has been both rewarding and challenging, with real-life challenges being thrown at the cohort from the moment the semester started. “I was really nervous but prepared for the presentation in class, and this is like the victory lap, where we can show what we’ve been working on in QUEST to our parents,” Salas-Dietz said. Something that her team bonded over was their coffee orders. They went out of their way to meet together and try new types of coffee together!

Salas-Dietz (second from right) and her team at the conference.

Maia Gustafson and her team worked together with Tronox. Two days before their final presentation, the team came together to work for hours on end on new financial insights from their company. Seven hours – yes, seven hours – together in ESJ turned into projections to save the company 7 million dollars per year. Well done, team!

Gustafson (second from right) and her team showcasing their very on-theme poster!

Now​​, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Most Outstanding Capstone! Avi Komarlingam and his team worked with Capital i and were honored to win this semester’s Most Outstanding Capstone award. Capital i is a healthcare technology management company that needed help in pricing contracts to service hospital medical devices. The CEO of the company was spending 800 hours per year working on this manually, but this amazing team was able to cut this time down to just 60 seconds using a neural network model. They even went above and beyond by building a desktop application to house the model for employees to use. This adds up to about 600 hours per year that the company can use to work on other tasks! But don’t worry, this team had a lot of fun, too. They all share a special memory of dancing to Cotton Eye Joe when they needed to let off steam.

The Most Outstanding Capstone award winners.

QUEST shows all of us what it really means to work as a team and be there for each other. Just like Dr. Bob Infantino, the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, said in his welcome speech; we really are a family. Congratulations on your outstanding projects, Cohort 39. We are so excited to see where your QUEST journey will take you here at UMD and beyond!