Voiland CollegeSchool of Electrical Engineering & Computer ScienceAcademicsUndergraduate ProgramSenior Design Course

Senior Design Course

WSU’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) senior design curriculum centers on meeting the requirements of an actual client.

All EECS students must take the two-semester senior design course in their senior year. The senior design course is an in-depth group project that requires students to practically apply knowledge from their previous coursework. Each senior design team is sponsored by a client. Both industry and research labs constitute clients. Every senior design team takes on a real-world project proposed by a client. Clients and mentors (usually faculty members) supervise and coach the senior design teams during the course. The final outcome of the project is each team delivering an actual hardware or software product. At the end of the course, teams present their projects in an open-house competition, and each project is judged by a panel of industry professionals.

Examples of recently completed designs include:

  • Design of a Multiple Sensor Board and Library to use with an Arduino Due.
  • Power Collection and Control Circuit for Ocean Wave Energy Converter.
  • Novel Catheter Navigation System for Endovascular Medical Procedures.
  • Acoustic source localization using a phased array of microphones.
  • Creation of software for precision drone landing in GPS-denied environments.
  • Creation of a Web application for utility substations to visualize and analyze conditions-based maintenance of the substations.
  • Creation of an AI game engine and a Web interface for solving Hnefatafl (King’s Table) board game.

Senior Design Resources

Sponsor a Senior Design Team

Let our seniors help you with your project. Sponsors provide tomorrow’s engineers and computer scientists valuable experience in project management, teamwork, innovation, and communication and presentation skills. Students gain real-world understanding of corporate priorities and product development.

As a sponsor you will provide:

  • An industry mentor who has at least a four year technical degree. The mentor supplies a detailed description of the project and works with the senior team to establish client needs and as well as the needs of other stakeholders beyond the sponsoring company. Ideally the mentor meets with the team once per week for the duration of the project.
  • A budget for the project. Budgets are flexible however the target amount is $5,000 provided by the sponsoring company. The budget pays for WSU staff support including electrical and mechanical shops; computer, electronic, and instrumentation hardware including printed circuit boards; computer software licenses; travel; and poster presentation materials. The dollar amount for the budget can be reduced substantially if the sponsoring company loans the team resources from their facility.

Contact one of our senior design faculty if you are interested in sponsoring a senior design team:

Past Senior Design Sponsors

Thank you to the generous sponsors who have supported senior design projects.

  • Alaska Airlines
  • Boeing
  • The City Government of Spokane
  • Crane Aerospace & Electronics
  • Dell
  • Emsi
  • Microsoft Corporation
  • Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
  • Puget Sound Energy
  • Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc.
  • Siemens
  • StormSensor
  • Trigun Industries
  • Tyler Technologies
  • Wesmar

  • Applied Ocean Energy (AOE)
  • Electrical Consultants Inc.
  • Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
  • Pyrus, Inc.
  • Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc.
  • StormSensor