Dr. James R. Chen Award

During the final semester of their second year, I School MIMS students undertake final projects. The program’s interdisciplinary nature makes many kinds of projects suitable. Some students design and implement a prototype information system. Others engage in a significant research project leading to a written thesis.

In the MIMS final project showcase, MIMS students present their final projects to a panel of professionals from outside the School of Information who select outstanding projects for the Dr. James R. Chen Awards. This award recognizes MIMS final projects that foster innovation, creative solutions, and pragmatic applications in information management and information systems.

Judging Guidelines

2024

Magenta: Make Democracy Fun Again

May Simpson, Nyah Mattison, Ivana Albernas, Soorya Narayan Satheesh, Donte Arrivas-Bedford

Magenta is a mobile application for young adults that provides them with highly accessible local political information.

Michael Rivera

Playscape: Cultivating Children’s Connection with Nature Through an Outdoor Play System

Andy Vo, Grace Roseman, Natalie Chan, Emily Ton, Zoya Abdullah

Playscape is an outdoor play system for kids to explore local biodiversity with an interactive installation and a digital app for educational experiences.

Kimiko Ryokai

2023

DigitALL: The Data Guide for Low-Resourced Organizations

Ian Mulholland

A user-friendly compilation of technology resources, tools, and exercises for organizations of all sizes and stages.

AnnaLee Saxenian

GNNIE: GNN-Recommender-as-a-Service

Pratik Aher, Arogya Koirala, Faezeh Taghva, Aayushi Sanghi, Heidi Lin, Benjamin Fell Costa, Michael Yang

Better recommendations for everyone, powered by graph neural networks

Daniel Aranki

MYND

Alyssa Guo, Calvin Lee, Wadzanai Makomva

MYND is an app designed to empower users to be proactive about their mental health by monitoring the user’s mental wellbeing. The app will automatically check…

John Chuang, Elliott Adams

The Hidden Emissions of Electric Vehicles

Astoria Ho, Clara Hu, Joshua Everts

Explore the sustainability of electric vehicles (EV) and factors that contribute to the vehicles’ environmental impact.

Marti Hearst

2022

A Founder’s Guide to No Code

Annais Paetsch

A big picture overview of the no code industry and help for founders in decision-making.

Morten Hansen

MateriALL: Auto-Generating Classroom Materials for Teachers

Helen Li, Nathan Khuu, Chia-Yi Chu, Eunyoung Cho

MateriALL is a tool that helps K-12th teachers automate the material creation process by taking existing content and generating additional, customizable…

Kimiko Ryokai

2021

Ontology Mapping for Cardiovascular Ailments

Brinda Gurusamy, Vibhor Sehgal, Ramya Ramesh

Harmonizing cardiac reports using ML to tackle variable reporting that hurts doctors’ and patients’ ability to communicate test results

Hany Farid

PrivacyBot

Cameron Lopez, James Carney, Archana Kulkarni, Joanne Jia

PrivacyBot, a simple way to start exercising your privacy rights. PrivacyBot allows you to delete your data from every major data broker and people search site…

Chris Jay Hoofnagle

2020

Malloci

Jennifer Momoh, Michael Gutensohn, Maria Belyi, Yejun Wu

A markdown-based web framework for generating WebVR exhibits.

Kimiko Ryokai

Sweep Smart

Yi Gai, Min-Chu Yang, Zhi Li, Jessie Lyu, Anna Waldo

An optimization tool for street sweeping planning to create a clean and organized environment with minimized interruption to the local community.

Hany Farid

2019

Improving the Enrollment Experience for Families

Kaushiki Priyam, Rajasi Desai, Varshine Chandrakanthan

Our MIMS Capstone Project focuses on the school enrollment process of public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. The aim is to make the enrollment process…

Jenna Burrell

Skindex

Daphne Jong, Devin Huang, Jeffery Chih-Chuan Yu, Monik Pamecha

Skindex aims to equip consumers with the ability to determine the impact of cosmetic ingredients on their own skin and health.

John Chuang

2018

Improved Personalization in MOOCs to Enhance Student Learning

Nianthrini Vivekanandan, Suchismita Padhy, Priyanka Patki, Sana Iqbal

There is no “one” right way. We all learn the best, in different ways. MOOCs for YOU, your way!

Zachary Pardos

PetSetGo!

Nihar Dalmia, Meghana Murthy Sibi Narayana, Nisha Pathak, Malavika Srinivasan, Rachel Thorp, Karan Rao

Pet Set Go! is a mobile application that seeks to reduce rehoming rates of adopted animals by strengthening the bond between pets and their new owners.

Steven Weber

2017

Teal Alert

Lynell Amanna, Jeanie Oh, Divya Garg

Using wearable devices to send out an alert when the user loses consciousness.

John Chuang

The Transparency Times

Andrea Gagliano, Sasha Volkov

A physical installation to explore the costs and benefits of the rise of connected infrastructure and embedded sensor technologies.

Kimiko Ryokai

2016

CardStak

Mohammad Hossein Ghasemzadeh, Samudra Bhuyan

CardStak bridges your offline network to your online network. Create Staks for various engagements (events, projects, classes) and allow people to know one-…

Steven Weber

Et al. Health

Ellen Van Wyk, John Semerdjian, Ricky Holtz, Bill Chambers

People diagnosed with a rare diseases often have a lot of trouble finding a doctor who can effectively care for them. Et al. Health solves this problem by…

Marti Hearst

Mole-bile Voice

Pi-Tan Hu, Wenqin Chen

Through user research we observed many blind smartphone users experienced difficulties navigating their phones and a voice user interface (VUI) could make…

John Chuang

2015

DiscoverCT

Jason Ost, Colin Gerber

A user-friendly interface for exploring and discovering clinical trials and their eligibility criteria, to benefit both critically ill patients and vital…

Marti Hearst

Snapily

Matt Valente, Irina Lozhkina, Todor Tzolov, Becca Stanger

A shopping app offering grocery pickup services to low-income residents, including SNAP and WIC participants. Our goal is to increase this population's access…

Steven Weber

TIRO

Faye Ip, Sophia Lay, Timothy Meyers, Jenny Lo

A hotline-management system to give small NGOs serving vulnerable clients in China better record-keeping and reporting capabilities, improving their services’…

Jenna Burrell, Tapan Parikh

2014

Common Ground

Jenton Lee, Isha Dandavate, Vanessa McAfee, Sophie Barness

A platform for educators to explore, share, and organize resources aligned with the Common Core Standards.

Zachary Pardos

Sahay

Eric Zan, Ajeeta Dhole, Priya Iyer, Seema Puthyapurayil

An information system to connect domestic help workers in India with part-time employment opportunities in households.

Tapan Parikh

StreetSavvy

Luis Aguilar, Kate Rushton, Raymon Sutedjo-The, Deb Linton

A web-based mobile mapping tool for safety-conscious pedestrians.

Coye Cheshire

2013

HouseCall

Rui Dai, Yu-Hsiang (Sean) Chen, Aijia Yan, Sara Cambridge

An in-home health monitoring system to reduce readmission for heart failure patients recently released from the hospital.

Tapan Parikh

Inpica

Arian Shams, Naila AlKhalawi, Gaurav Shetti, Jacob Portnoff

A collaborative web platform that re-imagines the way we go about arranging the spaces we live in.

Coye Cheshire

Mapestry

Carinne Johnson, Curtis Hwang, J. Elliot Nahman, Jennifer Wang

A suite of digital tools for collecting and sharing family histories.

Tapan Parikh

2012

Acopio

Ariel Chait, Paul Goodman

A social venture that improves the livelihoods of rural farmers through better management of source information.

Tapan Parikh

Apps for Kids & Parents

Elizabeth Ha, Emily Barabas, Kristine Ng

A suite of research-based mobile apps for families with young children, promoting digital and analog creativity, imagination, and sharing.

Deirdre Mulligan

Pop Up Radio Archive

Bailey R. Smith, Anne Wootton, Christen Penny

An integrated easy-to-use system for independent media producers to organize, archive, and publishing multimedia resources.

Robert Glushko, Ray Larson

2011

Heart-Focus Game Development for Kids

Daniel Perry

CritterQuest is an interactive biofeedback game to help the 8% of kids with ADD and ADHD focus and self-regulate.

Nancy Van House

Making Metadata: The Case of MusicBrainz

An exploration of music metadata crowdsourcing, including understanding participation incentives, community norms, and official guidelines and standards.

Brian Carver