Computer Engineering Commons^™

Beyond Campus, Sophia Miranda, Jenna Chinn, Dev Gupta

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

College is often regarded as a formative period for building lasting friendships, but many students - particularly new, transfer, or socially reserved individuals - struggle to form connections. Beyond Campus is a social networking platform designed specifically for college students to foster meaningful friendships through interest-based matchmaking. The platform leverages a custom algorithm to suggest compatible peers, supports the formation and discovery of community groups, and o↵ers secure, user-friendly messaging. Unlike existing social apps like Bumble BFF, ZeeMee, and GroupMe, which lack a dedicated focus on the college experience, Beyond Campus targets university communities directly. By providing a modern, inclusive, …

Secure Your Hardware With Randomization And Redundancy, Dennis Cao, Joseph Khamisy, Sumeet Upadhya

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Differential Fault Analysis (DFA) is a potent hardware attack that threatens cryptographic security by injecting faults into a cipher implementation to reveal secret keys. This project aims to mitigate DFA attacks on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) by implementing targeted countermeasures in an embedded AES-128 encryption core. Two key techniques are explored: Randomization and Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR). The randomization approach introduces unpredictability into the encryption process, which involves inserting dummy rounds, artificial noise, and random delays, to disrupt an attacker’s timing and analysis, while TMR provides redundancy by replicating critical rounds of computation and using majority voting to correct …

Revit Walasee: An Auto-Generated In-Wall Revit Model, Ally Delgado, Andrew Kimball, Calianna Collins, Yi Qian Goh

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The Revit WalaSee is a software-hardware integration tool designed to make building renovations smarter and more sustainable. In the construction industry, rework and demolition make up a large part of global construction waste and carbon emissions, largely due to the lack of internal wall documentation in older buildings. Our project addresses this issue by developing the pipeline between the Walabot wall scanner, a handheld device that detects hidden elements behind drywall, and Autodesk Revit, a widely used platform for Building Information Modeling (BIM).With the Revit WalaSee, someone without extensive technical training could scan any wall and produce accurate 3D modelling …

Leetquest, Sanvir Bal, Vladimir Ceban, Matty Herzig, Daryl Ho

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The technical interview process for software engineering position has drastically changed in recent times to focus on Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA). Although, data structures and algorithms are a foundational aspect of several programming languages, the questions asked in the technical interview process do not accurately reflect, in terms of style and difficulty, the experience students and professionals have with DSA from school and work respectively. As a result, many have looked to online resources in order sharpen their DSA problem solving skills. However, the existing solutions are riddled with flaws. In particular, the learning resources they provide are locked …

Real-Time 3d Automated Spotlight Tracking System, Francine Garcia, Mary Hemker

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Commercially available automated spotlight systems tend to be expensive and unattainable for smaller school or community theaters. This project provides a cheap alternative to automated spotlight systems on the market and is compatible with most stage lighting architecture by using the Digital Multiplex (DMX) Protocol.

Circuit boards with Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio frequency track an actor’s coordinates in a 3D space defined by four UWB anchors. A Raspberry Pi single-board computer acts as a controller and converts the coordinates into pan and tilt angles and maps these calculations to values that the spotlight can read in order to move. These values …

Ascertion: Middleware For Content Moderation, Mia Lassiter, Vani Aggarwal

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The Internet is dominated by a handful of social media platforms that disproportionately control content curation and moderation. As a result, it is increasingly difficult for users to discern verified and credible information from misinformation and disinformation. Middleware is a specialized software with mechanisms to decentralize platform power and reinstate users with autonomy over their online experiences. We propose middleware that gives users the autonomy to create and consume authentic and trusted content. We achieved a proof of concept for a middleware with mechanisms for verifiable content posting and authentication. Our solution is implemented as a Chrome plug-in that provides …

Portuguese For Mozambican Mothers – A Language Empowerment App, Josh Kindarara, Alexandre Lopes, Gwendolyn Patwardhan, Riana Santos, Sara Wheeler

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

In Mecúfi, Mozambique, the mothers of children who attend school through the DIFF EDUCATION program have a strong desire to learn Portuguese, the country’s national language, due to colonization. However, they have minimal formal education and little to no experience with technology. They are unable to read or write in any language, including their native language, Makhuwa, making many current educational resources unusable. This leaves these mothers without accessible, culturally relevant tools to help address their linguistic needs.

This project focuses on developing an educational application designed for non-literate mothers in rural Mozambique. The app emphasizes visual and auditory learning …

Boundary Value Problems Associated With Morse-Novikov Cohomology Groups Of Riemannian Manifolds With Boundary, Qusay S. A. Al-Zamil, Mohammed Y. Abass

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

In this paper, we provide an affirmative response to the following question: if Morse-Novikov cohomology groups of M with non-empty boundary ∂M do not vanish, then what topological or analytical(geometrical) constraints can be enforced to ensure that the equation 𝖽θω=η is solvable for any non-trivialprescribed [η] in absolute Hθk(M) or relative Hθk(M,∂M) Morse-Novikov cohomology groups?. Where 𝖽θω=𝖽ω+θ∧ω and 0≠[θ]∈HdR1(M) for any ω∈ …

Retracted: A Novel Scheme To Optimize Lsb Steganography Based On A Logistic Chaotic Map And Genetic Algorithm, Dena Abu Laila, Ibrahim Moh'd Obeidt, Mohammad Aljaidi, Mohammed Amin Almaiah, Muneer Albourini, Qais Al-Na'amneh, Ghassan Samara, Rami Shehab, Khaled Momani

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

Steganography has gained importance in various fields, including cloud security, internet banking, military applications, and medical imaging. Additionally, it is popular due to its many uses, becoming a hot research topic. The Least Significant Bit (LSB) approach is among the simplest ways to embed secret data in a cover image. We proposed a new scheme using LSB with the genetic algorithm GA to find the optimal solution permutation for embedding the pixel assortment of the image where data is to be concealed, and a chaotic genetic algorithm (CGA) to efficiently find the best crossover and mutation performance in the chromosomes. …

Hybrid Methods Of Two Conjugate Gradient Coefficients With Modified Condition For Solving Unconstrained Optimization, Yasir Salih, Sudradjat

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

The conjugate gradient (CG) technique is an efficient method for solving nonlinear optimization problems, especially for large scale problems. This is due to simplicity, low memory requirement, and computational cost, which satisfy the sufficient descent condition. This paper presents a new modification of the PRP method which can be considered as a convex combination of PRP and DPRP methods. The performance of the new method is analyzed to ensure the descent property under exact line search. Numerical experiments indicate that this method has good convergence performance and is promising.

Wesearch - Scu’S Research Hub, Beatrice Hackman, Hilary Le, Meagan Vu, Nicholas Cheung

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Santa Clara University (SCU) hosts a flourishing undergraduate research program, but discovering research opportunities remains inefficient due to inconsistent information channels. Students rely on informal communication and disconnected departmental web pages to find research roles. In response, our senior design team developedWeSearch: a centralized, web-based platform that consolidates research opportunities across all SCU laboratories. It allows students to browse labs, projects, and apply directly to open positions. Faculty members can create lab profiles, post research openings, manage applications, and assign administrative roles to student assistants.

The platform was designed using Figma and implemented with React.js on the front-end. Firebase was …

Accelerating Llm Inference With Smart Nic Tokenization And Caching, Sudarshan Mehta

Computer Science and Engineering Master's Theses

Tokenization is a critical preprocessing step in machine learning pipelines, particularly for generative AI models such as large language models (LLMs). Despite significant advances in training and inference technologies, tokenization continues to be a notable performance bottleneck due to its CPU-bound nature and limited acceleration support. This thesis proposes NetTokenizer, a system designed to offload tokenization from CPUs to network data planes. Utilizing software frameworks such as the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) and hardware-based SmartNIC solutions, NetTokenizer substantially improves inference efficiency. Experimental evaluations demonstrate up to a 95.9% reduction in tail latency and a 5.73x throughput increase compared to …

Neural Ranking In Sparse Data Environments, Xuyang Wu

Engineering Ph.D. Theses

Neural ranking models have become central to modern information retrieval (IR) systems, powering applications such as web search, product recommendation, and question answering. However, their effectiveness often hinges on access to abundant labeled supervision, a condition that is rarely met in real-world scenarios. In many domains, including e-commerce, healthcare, and legal search, labeled user interactions (e.g., clicks, purchases, or expert annotations) are sparse, especially for long-tail queries and new content. This data sparsity challenges the generalization, adaptability, and fairness of traditional ranking approaches.

This thesis presents a unified investigation of neural ranking under sparse supervision, introducing novel methods and analytical …

Tiny-Tlic: Lightweight Transformer Based Lossy Image Compression, Chen Li

Computer Science and Engineering Master's Theses

This thesis presents a comprehensive study on image compression, beginning with a review of both traditional and learning-based methods. Building upon the conventional Variational Autoencoder (VAE) framework, we explore the integration of Vision Transformer (ViT) architectures into the image compression pipeline to leverage their global modeling capabilities. Based on this, we propose Tiny-TLIC (Tiny Transformer-Based Lossy Image Compression), a lightweight yet effective model that introduces two novel components: Integrated Convolution and Self-Attention (ICSA) for enhanced feature representation, and a Multistage Context Model (MCM) for improved entropy estimation. To validate our approach, we train both a baseline Transformer-Based Image Compression (TIC) …

Spy Bot, Nathanael Bruce Farris

Computer Engineering

This project set out to develop a compact, mobile-controlled robotic platform designed for remote video surveillance and control via a smartphone. Using a Raspberry Pi as the core controller, the robot integrates a Flask-based server, HTML/JavaScript-based user interface, and an infrared-capable camera to provide real-time video streaming and directional control through a web browser. Key design challenges included managing power delivery, integrating motor control with live video, and modernizing web technologies to ensure smooth communication between client and server. The final system demonstrates a responsive and portable proof of concept that highlights the potential for future upgrades, such as night …

From Vigilance To Veracity: Hallucination Detection, Mitigation, And Safety Enhancement In Large Language Models, Sharanya Dasgupta

Master’s Dissertations

Human cognition, driven by complex neurochemical processes, oscillates between imagination and reality and learns to self-correct whenever such subtle drifts lead to hallucinations or unsafe associations. In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have garnered widespread attention due to their adeptness at generating innovative responses to the given prompts across a multitude of domains, yet they exhibit a critical limitation: the propensity to produce factually incorrect and potentially harmful content while preserving syntactic coherence and logical structure. In this work, we hypothesize that these deficiencies in LLMs originate from their internal representational dynamics. Our observations indicate that, during passage generation, …

Custom Data Acquisition System For The Cal Poly Racing Baja Team, Joe Keenan

Computer Engineering

The Cal Poly Racing Baja team relies on data to analyze and improve upon various vehicle systems in an off-road style vehicle. In order to accomplish this, some data logging or data acquisition (DAQ) is required to collect the data. This project explores the use of a controller area network with flexible data rate (CAN FD) bus along with a custom file format to store data on an SD card that can be made easily acceptable to engineers on the team.

Open-Source Cubesat Flight Software And Simulation, James Gruber

Computer Engineering

An open-source FreeRTOS-based flight software framework for CubeSats, with an example flight software package and simulation demonstrating real-time attitude control.

How Long Can I Transmit? A Mobility Aware Mmwave-Based Uav Communication Framework, Shawon Mitra

Master’s Dissertations

One primary focus of next generation wireless communication networks is the millimeterwave (mmWave) spectrum, typically considered in the 30 GHz to 300 GHz frequency range. Despite their promise of high data rates, mmWaves su↵ers from severe attenuation while passing through obstacles. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been proposed to o↵set this limitation on account of their additional degrees of freedom, which can be leveraged to provide line of sight (LoS) transmission paths. While some prior works have proposed analytical frameworks to compute the LoS probability for static ground users and a UAV, the same is lacking for mobile users on …

Reverse Engineering Bring Up And Profiling Of Multi-Fpga Systems, Henry A. Evans

Master's Theses

FPGAs have long been used for prototyping and verifying high-speed digital designs in industry and in academic research. As ASIC designs have grown in complexity and size, prototyping those designs on FPGAs has required multiple FPGAs that sometimes span multiple servers. Western Digital donated multiple FPGA-based systems to Cal Poly in 2023. These servers contain multiple high-end AMD FPGAs that are ideal for prototyping large high-speed digital designs, however the full documentation on how to use the servers and how the servers work was not provided. The servers did not come with any information on how to program the FPGAs, …

Assessment Of The Imx7ulp Heterogeneous Soc For Use In A Next Generation Student Cubesat Obc, Lorenzo A. Pedroza

Master's Theses

CubeSats represent a rapidly evolving platform for space research, industry, and education, demanding increasingly sophisticated onboard computing solutions that balance performance, fault tolerance, size, weight, and power constraints. Although the design of the Cal Poly's CubeSat Lab's (PolySat) current On-Board Computer (OBC) keeps up with many of these factors, the demands of modern workloads like fine attitude determination will start to outpace available compute. While the selection of a more capable processor to address this would have traditionally resulted in increased energy usage, modern system-on-chip (SoC) architectures offer novel ways to trade available compute for power savings on-the-fly. With this …

Griddle: A Novel Hardware Based Matrix Multiplier Architecture, Seth Kiefer

Master's Theses

Matrix multiplication is a computational cornerstone in modern artificial intelligence and scientific computing, yet general-purpose processors struggle to perform these operations efficiently at scale. This thesis presents Griddle, a novel hardware architecture for matrix multiplication implemented on a Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA. Griddle focuses on flexibility and scalability by adopting a purely iterative approach that supports arbitrarily shaped input matrices without requiring padding or strict dimensional constraints. The architecture uses computational pipelines to execute a multiplication operation. Each pipe consists of a multiplication core and accumulation buffer that compute matrix products in parallel. The multiplication core contains a set of multiplier …

Deeppanorf: Deep Prior For Neural 3d Reconstruction From Sparse Panoramas, Edward Du

Master's Theses

Advances in neural field representations have led to a significant improvement in view synthesis quality. However, many current novel view synthesis methods rely on a dense set of input views, which can be impractical and inefficient in real-world applications. We propose DeepPanoRF, a novel method for 360◦ scene reconstruction from a sparse set of input equirectangular panoramas. Built upon K-Planes, a radiance field representation that encodes explicit features on orthogonal feature planes, our method does not directly learn feature grids. Instead, we parameterize the feature grids to enable sparse view reconstruction without pretraining or additional regularization. We implement a custom …

Adversarial Deep Reinforcement Learning For Tank Duel Simulation Using Lidar-Based Observations, Braedan Kennedy

Master's Theses

Previous research has demonstrated that reinforcement learning agents can learn to steer differential-drive robots around obstacles using 2D lidar scans as observations. However, these studies typically treat all range returns as undifferentiated obstacles—objects to avoid—without distinguishing between different object types. This thesis builds upon previous research by introducing an adversarial task in which an agent must interpret raw range readings to both avoid static obstacles and identify, pursue, and engage a hostile target.

To investigate this problem, this thesis introduces TankGame, a novel, lightweight 2D tank duel simulator. Each agent receives a 360° lidar scan, controls its motion via tread …

Sentry V3: Extending Context Switches On A Trusted Secure Coprocessor, Mark Kong

Master's Theses

Software correctness and integrity is only ensured through trust in the un- derlying hardware. However, modern computer systems are complex to design and secure. Thus, given the choice between performance and security, companies will often prioritize performance, resulting in vulnerable systems. This creates exploitable systems that must be patched retroactively because business value performance over security. One approach to this issue is to separate the root of security from the rest of the system to create a minimal trusted computing base. Trustguard is one instance of this. Trustguard implements a Containment Architecture with Ver- ified Output (CAVO) model which shows …

Simulated Live Studio Audience, Theodore David Shellenberger

Computer Engineering

The Simulated Live Studio Audience is a Python based application that utilizes Vosk, Roboflow, and Llama 3.2 to provide a user with auditory feedback based upon both visual and audible input from their device's microphone and camera. This system functions with a custom trained computer vision model to detect a specified object and when individuals walk in and out of the camera frame, outputting sitcom style simulated crowd reaction sounds accordingly. The simulated studio audience program also takes in vocal input from users, converts it to text, and, using a large language model, analyzes it for content that can be …

Framework For Multi-Agent Coordination And Distributed Localization In Micro-Uavs, Minwoo Park, Nikolas Tambornini

Electrical Engineering

Micro-UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) due to their inexpensive nature and compact form factor have shown an increase in prevalence throughout a multitude of applications including, but not limited to: search and rescue, military reconnaissance, and agriculture monitoring. However, for a majority of these high impact applications, a swarm of micro-UAVs are required and furthermore mandate that they are able to cooperatively and autonomously coordinate with each other. For long, controlling and communicating between a user and a singular micro-UAV has been a well known and solved problem, however the same can't be said for swarms of micro-UAVs. This project seeks …

Autonomous Mapping Rover, Garrett Jones, Timothy Kyle Chu, Eugenio Caruso Pasos

Electrical Engineering

This report details the design, implementation, and evaluation of "Rovero," an autonomous mapping rover developed as a senior project. Rovero integrates state-of-the-art technologies, including ROS2 for communication, SLAM algorithms for mapping, and sensor fusion for accurate navigation. The project aimed to achieve robust autonomous operation in indoor environments, leveraging a combination of LiDAR, IMU, and encoder data for real-time decision-making. Key challenges addressed include path planning, obstacle avoidance, and integration of multiple sensor inputs. Results demonstrate successful mapping capabilities and efficient navigation performance.

Design Principles For Robotic-Controlled 3d Printing Of Soft Tissue-Mimicking Materials, Karina Mealey

Master's Theses

Geometrically and physically accurate 3D models are emerging as essential tools for surgeons in pre-operative planning and training, but current methods of producing these models are not sufficient. Existing solutions have downsides such as high costs, long and tedious production times, high complexity resulting in a lack of scalability, or an inability to meet material requirements for accurately simulating human tissue.

The objective of this work is to develop principles for a low-cost, easy-to-use 3D printing system capable of prototyping with soft tissue-mimicking materials. To pursue this goal, a MyCobot280 robot arm was used as the mechanism to explore the …

Farmnav-Uav: A Field-Ready Autonomous Uav For Tracking Static And Dynamic Trajectories In Agricultural Applications, Veera Venkata Ram Murali Krishna Rao Muvva

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study presents the design and development of a custom-built uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) tailored for precision agriculture. Unlike commercial UAVs, which are often constrained by proprietary systems and limited hardware customization, the proposed platform emphasizes modularity, upgradeability, and cost-effectiveness. The UAV is equipped with a Cube Blue flight controller for reliable low-level actuation and a Raspberry Pi 4 companion computer that executes a Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm for high-level trajectory optimization and stability enhancement.

Most conventional UAV autopilot systems rely on non-optimal control strategies, such as proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controllers, which can be inadequate for dynamic or resource-constrained environments. …