Software and Societal Systems Department
Capstone Programs
Master of Software Engineering Degree Program (MSE): Studio Project
January–December (three semesters)
Sponsorship Fee: $30,000per project / $25,000per project (nonprofit), 4-5 students per team; up to 6,000 engineering hours
The MSE program for professionals includes a studio project that occupies one-third of the program’s curriculum. Recognized by the IEEE CSEE&T Hall of Fame for its trailblazing development, the studio project attracts real-world problems from industry, government and academic research.
Each sponsored studio project is a team-oriented, real-world capstone effort that provides a sandbox in which students demonstrate their grasp of core software engineering concepts. Students design and develop a product, interact with customers, and manage team tasks and processes in a full life-cycle environment. This experience affords students the opportunity to apply theoretical learning to practice in a realistic setting — to implement the ideas they have learned in the classroom to meet realistic challenges.
Past Projects Include
- Working on ground communication software for a moon rover.
- Building an app that automatically spots and corrects inventory values while providing insights into “available to promise” inventory for backend execution of the digital experience.
- Developing an integrated simulation environment for autonomous driving vehicles.
- Developing an AML platform that will provide a software environment that enables users to easily explore and understand design alternatives.
Program Lead
James Berardone
Professor of Product Management
Software and Societal Systems Department
MSE–Scalable Systems (SS) and MSE–Embedded Systems (ES) Programs: Software Engineering Practicum
September–December (fall semester)
Sponsorship Fee: $13,000 per project / $10,000 per project (non-profit), 4-8 students per team; up to 3,000 engineering hours.
For the Scalable Systems program, students study scalable systems, including large-scale, distributed intelligent systems. For the Embedded Systems program, students study embedded systems, including Internet-of-Things (IoT) and sensor-based systems. Students learn best practices for managing, predicting and delivering quality software. The practicum project provides a sandbox in which students demonstrate their grasp of core software engineering concepts in the last semester of their degree.
Past Projects Include
- Developing a modular and portable Electronic Health Record (EHR) API.
- Building a unified systems monitoring platform that models and monitors all components across hardware, software and human activities.
- Building a sensor development kit that would determine an effective way to test and integrate sensor products into different position tracking applications.
- Building an extensible system and method for cryptographically verifying the source of information and checking the tampered information.
Program Lead
James Berardone
Professor of Product Management
Software and Societal Systems Department
Master of Science in Privacy Engineering (MSPE)
Primarily September–December (sometimes in the spring or summer)
Sponsorship Fee: $25,000 per team (discounts available for early startups and nonprofits)
Carnegie Mellon’s Privacy Engineering Master’s program is the first and only program dedicated to training computer scientists and engineers to develop products and services that respect user privacy. Classroom instruction, student research projects, internships and capstone projects done in partnership with industry give students the skill set needed to identify and resolve privacy challenges in modern software systems.
Past Projects Include
- Privacy risk assessment and mitigation projects.
- Design and prototyping of novel privacy and security solutions.
- Technical privacy compliance projects.
- Privacy and AI/ML projects, including differential privacy and federated machine learning.
- Consumer surveys, privacy UX design and security UX design.
For more information and to contact us, visit the MSPE website.