As the Spring 2024 semester was coming to an end at Pace University, the school’s NYC Design Factory, located at the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, hosted a gala event showcasing its student projects.

The NYC Design Factory serves as a collaborative hub where students, faculty, and industry professionals come together to address challenges in both industry and society through activities and courses. It is a member of the Design Factory Global Network, a global community of innovation hubs located in universities and research centers dedicated to fostering the next generation of innovators. The program is centered around a problem-solving approach that is technology-centered, design-inspired, and human-focused.

At the event, Andreea Cotoranu, the Director of the NYC Design Factory and Clinical Professor at Seidenberg, told the audience how the impressive projects that were presented had a crucial role in the students putting their learned knowledge into practice:

The student projects supported through the NYC Design Factory and the Design Factory Global Network offer unique opportunities for students to work on interesting industry and societal challenges. They also enable students to collaborate internationally with a diverse range of academic and industry stakeholders, preparing them with valuable skills for the future.

As for the gala itself, Professor Cotoranu added that it “showcased a small yet impressive range of products, services, and experiences created by Seidenberg students. As part of their coursework, students tackled both specific and complex challenges, demonstrating innovative solutions and practical applications of the design and technology tools they learned.”

Featured projects were not only presented by NYC Design Factory students, but also fellow students from Seidenberg’s Product Development, Prototyping and User Experience, and Software Engineering courses.

As part of the Independent Study (IS 600) course, mentored by Andreea Cotoranu and Seidenberg Adjunct Instructor Susanna Lammervo, there were three projects shown at the gala. Team NY Falcons presented Ford AutomAlte, a concept which focuses on enhancing safety and comfort with autonomous vehicles used as public transport, especially shuttles. Team Bubble-Tea addressed safety concerns for e-bike riders in busy urban environments with SafeCycle, and Team Ditto tackled mobility challenges faced by the elderly and those with disabilities, particularly in walking and driving, with their product GaitEase.

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Projects from the Product Development (CS 365/665) course were mentored by Andreea Cotoranu, Susanna Lammervo, and Pace Film and Screen Studies Department Chair and Professor, Luke Cantarella. Team Griffin, aiming to develop versatile flight simulators for various industry applications and trade show demonstrations, developed the GoFly simulator. The solution developed by team The DesignSeers, Food for Thought, seeks to improve access to fresh and affordable produce in New York City and examines ways to empower residents to re-evaluate their relationship with food. Team Oculus addressed the environmental challenge posed by increasing space debris and satellite collisions by developing ORRUS, the Orbital Recovery Recycling and Utilization System.

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Students from the Software Engineering Capstone (CS 491) course were mentored by Seidenberg professor, associate dean, and co-director of the new Seidenberg AI Lab, Dr. Christelle Scharff. Team MoonFlo focused on providing comprehensive support for women’s well-being, by creating an all-encompassing menstrual wellness tracker app called MoonFlo.

Shape Tomorrow’s Skyline and the Simpsons Effect, teams from the Prototyping and User Experience (IS 630) course, were mentored by Seidenberg Clinical Assistant Professor, Jonathan Williams, D. Des. Both teams concentrated on developing digital museums that accommodate digitally native artifacts. Shape Tomorrow’s Skyline is an exhibit designed to empower users to unleash their creativity by designing buildings that can be integrated into the New York City skyline, while the Simpsons Effect showcases how "The Simpsons" remarkably predicted over 10 real-life events by accompanying snippets from the corresponding episodes with comparisons to the real-life occurrences.

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Jonathan Williams pointed out that these teams’ presentations were “the culmination of a semester full of site visits to museums, desk research, and developing a multitude of prototypes. Their work highlighted a true commitment to the practice of iterative prototyping.”

He also perfectly reflected the thoughts of the audience, as well as the professors who mentored all these innovative projects, when he said that “it was such a joy to watch my students present their work at the Project Gala."

Giving them the chance to share their work with the Pace community beyond the classroom not only builds awareness for their work, but affords them the opportunity to grow their professional communication skills as designers and technologists.

In March 2024, five Economics Department faculty and 10 undergraduate and graduate students, all Dyson economics and business economics majors, presented their research papers at the annual Eastern Economic Association (EEA) conference in Boston, one of the major conferences for professional economists on the East Coast of the United States.

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The student presentations, organized by Assistant Professors Mary Kaltenberg, PhD and Eric Osborne Christenson, PhD, focused on timely topics such as labor economics, sports economics, applied microeconomics, and the savings and financial markets. Both faculty and students fielded many questions and comments from professional economists as well as other engaged attendees who took part in the well-attended sessions.

The participation in the EEA conference by students is a prime example of the many innovative, experiential education opportunities provided by the Economics Department (another being the College Federal Reserve Challenge, through which Pace’s team won the National College Federal Reserve Challenge five times in the last nine years, besting Harvard and Princeton). As part of their research leading up to the EEA conference, students had the opportunity to develop analytical and quantitative skills, while also building their portfolio and resume in a way that will stand out to employees, thus enhancing their competitive edge in today’s job market.

Professor and Chair of Economics Anna Shostya said, “Through original research and guidance from faculty mentors, our students gained the capacity to convert theoretical knowledge into practical use, bridging the gap between academic learning and real-world problem-solving.” 

Training in the (economic) trenches

McKenna Moore ’24, who is in the combined BA in Economics/MS in Applied Quantitative Economic Analysis and Policy program, and also a sports enthusiast, wanted to choose a topic that both interested her and was technically challenging, requiring the use and enhancement of the web scraping skills learned in R and Python classes taken at Pace.

“Through weekly meetings with Professor Kaltenberg, I was able to learn about different types of modeling that I never would have been exposed to in the classroom while pursuing my dual degree."

—McKenna Moore ’24

On her experience researching the topic, An Examination of the “Loser Effect” in the NFL, she said, “Through weekly meetings with Professor Kaltenberg, I was able to learn about different types of modeling that I never would have been exposed to in the classroom while pursuing my dual degree. I was also able to lean on my peers who were simultaneously doing research to get their feedback as I progressed through this research, which was very helpful."

The comradery among students and their support of each other, in fact, did not go unnoticed by Kaltenberg, who was particularly impressed by the long hours they spent digging into each other’s research papers and their dedication to providing quality feedback. When asked about feedback provided by other attendees at the conference, she shares that many were surprised that students were at the undergraduate or even graduate level, and presenting original work.

“Many attendees assumed our students were doctoral students. I was proud of the level of their work–many used advanced econometric techniques, had clever topics and ideas, and presented professionally,” she said.

Liam Chentoufi ’25 is a BA in Economics major who, for the past two years, has also been a member of the College Federal Reserve Challenge team, which, just prior to the EEA conference, had met with the Board of Governors in Washington, DC (as well as Chairman Powell) to ask competition-specific questions to a panel of judges as a finale to the 2023 competitive season. Given this, Chentoufi was drawn to questions surrounding the Fed and the macroeconomy, and his EEA presentation topic was Understanding the Federal Reserve.

His main takeaway from the experience was learning more about how economics conferences are conducted and, relatedly, how he can further develop his research skills. He said, “In addition to presenting our own work, attendees are often asked to be a ‘discussant’ for other papers in which one presents their interpretation/questions for the peer paper assigned to them. After receiving audience feedback, I now have more organized ideas as to what can be improved upon in my personal project.”

“Many attendees assumed our students were doctoral students. I was proud of the level of their work–many used advanced econometric techniques, had clever topics and ideas, and presented professionally."

—Assistant Professor of Economics Mary Kaltenberg, PhD

Macey Cooper ’24, who is also in the combined BA in Economics/MS in Applied Quantitative Economic Analysis and Policy program, had always been interested in the healthcare sector, and, when she was younger, thought she might even want to be a doctor. Her presentation topic, Medicaid and Maternal Mortality Rates, was therefore the perfect opportunity to combine her interest in both the medical field and in economics, as she chose to look at Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, and how it might affect pregnant women.

She shares how attending the EEA conference brought her out of her comfort zone as she was tasked with presenting in front of individuals outside of the Pace community. To use an economics term, her experience was very “macro:” “I was able to gain insight into how my research resonated with a broader community, and how it fits into the overall ecosystem of the economic impact on healthcare,” she said.

The importance of funding

Kaltenberg, who also presented research at the conference with colleague, Eric Osborne Christenson, PhD, on the effect of a lack of childcare access due to Covid-19 on female labor force participation, shared that many students had been motivated to continue a career in research or consider a graduate degree in economics due to their experiences.

It was all made possible by the Dyson Initiative Fund, which allows students to participate annually, versus every two to three years, as is the case with the New York City conference.

“This funding is crucial to allow every generation of economics majors the opportunity to present their work in a professional environment. We hope to send our best students who do original research to this conference every year,” said Kaltenberg.

Darsh Joshi (MS in Data Science, ‘24) is a master's student at the Seidenberg School who skillfully engages in his technological passion through leading a multitude of projects involving artificial intelligence, data collection, and being involved with Pace’s very own Data Science club. Join us as we go through a typical day in Darsh’s life where he offers a glimpse of a busy career, handling it with grace and pure ambition.

The most ideal start to a good day in Darsh’s world would be sipping on a nice cup of coffee, either through Starbucks or any of the coffee shops that surround the NYC campus. He specifically enjoys roaming around the area in search of different kinds of salad places to eat at; a particular grub spot that has his heart is Raj’s Indian Kitchen right on 53 Nassau Street.

After a quick bite to eat, Darsh likes to get down to business, spearheading a variety of projects here in Seidenberg’s Computational Intelligence Lab. Filling the leadership position has always been a recurring theme in his life, first starting with a student leader position on his primary school’s quiz team, later on finding multiple student organizations and workshops as an undergrad. Darsh tells us, “It has been amazing leading a small team at the CI-Lab, as well as becoming the founder and President of the Data Science club." At Pace, he is easily able to apply extracurriculars that he enjoyed frequently in the past to his craft and studies.

It’s fascinating being a student and dealing with a leadership role as it places me ahead in my field where I’ll have to be heavily involved with clients and deliver the best product. As students, we are constantly delivering events and workshops to get more people involved.

Some of the research projects Darsh has worked on require an intense amount of time, effort, focus, and resources. Certain challenges stumped Darsh until he ended up in Seidenberg’s hands; “The Computational Intelligence Lab has helped me a lot. Juypter Server from that lab gave me a massive boost in terms of physical storage and computing power. Online articles and YouTube videos helped in wondering where and how to start.” Artificial intelligence is a massive part of Darsh’s trajectory, first beginning with his original goal of becoming a robotics engineer when he was an undergrad. Hearing about the exact nature of machine learning from one of his professors sent him on a journey through hackathons and a project where he had the ability to teach a machine a series of hand gestures and movements, going as far as to turning on the lights or even flipping the switch on a fan.

Onward, he has experimented with and achieved results with learning generative AI. This form of artificial intelligence technique involves creating or generating data that is similar to human-created content. Images, text, music, etc. are all elements of a larger subset of data where these models are trained to learn patterns before the generation process. Certain projects involved with this model concern the likes of data collection, data processing, generating reports beyond what is already established. It has a wide range of uses applicable for businesses and companies. AI innovation is led by aspiring and creative minds right here on the NYC campus. As of now, Darsh hopes to start and lead a startup business where he can solve numerous problems relating to his field, with an aspect of his work now being focused on machine unlearning.

As an international student, Darsh holds a lot of love for what Pace has to offer to his goals in life. When asked about what specifically drew him to Seidenberg, Darsh replied that it “was the location and the variety of courses that the Data Science program had to offer."

I’m able to take the maximum potential out of New York City for my major, alongside the design of the program helping me become a better candidate for my career.

And becoming the prime candidate is exactly how he spends his time. A well-rounded education aids in the development of his skills when he plans to transition into the workforce. Although he commutes, there are plenty of things that draw him to extending his stay on campus when he can. Access to the Seidenberg lounge is a big one; “It has everything I need to chill, starting with the kitchen appliances where I can heat up lunch.” Seating areas allow him to spend time with friends as well as set up quick meetings with his team. And a good hour and a half of what would be his commute time is knocked off simply from being able to work at Pace’s new 15 Beekman building!

As for Darsh’s advice to any prospective students who may be unsure or nervous about attending? “Take all that Pace has to offer. I see that there are a lot of students just attending lectures and going back home when they could be utilizing the resources and attending the events the university has for them.” Currently, Darsh and his team have conducted multiple events concerning the advancement of data research and science such as the Data Pipeline workshop, a Database Challenge, and notable guest speakers. He also aids in the promotion of the CI-Lab, aiming to create a productive and healthy atmosphere for any student to seek refuge in.