Six students billing themselves as the “Flu Fighters” stood on the Herrick Hall stage in white medical masks.
“There’s no need for these anymore,” Ustav Sapkota ’25 told the crowd, as he and his partners removed their face coverings. “Yes, you heard me correctly.”
It was the Flu Fighters’ dramatic way of grabbing attention and promoting their idea for a website designed to educate younger students about the spread of influenza and ways to limit it. They were one of four groups in professor Ashwin Lall’s software engineering course to pitch ideas at a December 2024 showcase.
Lall, the computer science chair, said the 24 students spent three months developing software for four projects — each one simulating real-world needs of clients.
The “Game Day” group made an app allowing youth sports commissioners to build schedules and giving players and their parents updated information on game times and locations. The “TA Chatbot” team designed a program using information from course documents that let students ask about office hours, important class requirements, and deadlines, thus sparing their professors from having to answer repetitive questions. The “Energy Dashboard” sextet created a web portal with a summary of Denison’s renewable energy production.
“There was a steep learning curve, and many moving parts,” said Anish Banswada ’26, about the TA Chatbot project. “But it was a lot of fun to come out here and present it.”
Showcasing their products was a reward for months of hard work in the classroom. Students learned theoretical software engineering principles, dealt with clients’ needs, and demonstrated the agility to make adjustments.
“What they learned through the semester is that it’s less about building the product,” Lall said, “and more about the process of building the product.”
