Partner-led capstones happens when a project uses exclusively (or almost entirely) corporate resources and intellectual property versus university resources and intellectual property. This capstone model has a faculty liaison. At the discretion of the industry sponsor, students may work from the company’s physical location or remotely but the industry point person will be expected to communicate with the team on a regular basis.

Students work in a 2 semester course where the first semester helps build necessary skills and the second semester contains multiple projects, often interrelated.

See our Intellectual Property (IP) Guidelines. In addition, at the company’s request, students may sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

Each student on the team for a university or partner-led capstone is expected to spend approximately 6 hours a week on the project in the fall and 9 hours a week in the spring semester.

In a partner-led capstone, industry advisors take the lead in driving project direction. At a minimum, industry advisors provide students with a real-world business and technical challenge to help them apply what they are learning in the classroom: technology, communication, business and leadership skills.

Specific commitments will be established and agreed upon among students, faculty, and industry advisor(s) at the beginning of each project.

Team size can range from 1 to 6 students per team with an average of 4 students, chosen from seven engineering departments.

• Bioengineering (BioE)
• Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE)
• Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS)
• Industrial Engineering & Operations Research (IEOR)
• Materials Science & Engineering (MSE)
• Mechanical Engineering (ME)
• Nuclear Engineering (NE)

In a partner-led capstones, industry sponsors should expect to provide all of the necessary resources (laboratory equipment and software) required for the students to work on the capstone project.

We accept project ideas and proposals in March for the following academic year. The initial deadline for project concept is due in April. The full capstone proposal is due in June. Teams will start work on the projects in early September through the following May.