For the past few years, the final project for the course, COMP6905 has been a research write-up.  This year it was no different, but there was a key addition to the requirements:

“Design a cloud service based on research being done on campus”

Each proposal had use current research or support research work being done. As an approach, its something we explored over at Teleios Code Jam before, but with a bit less rigor. One year, we required teams to base their submissions on articles that appeared in the media. It produced a lot of solutions with disaster preparedness/flooding as the focus.

But this class, they went to town with this requirement. We saw proposals for cloud services focused on the Seismic Research Center, on diabetes research, on alternative energy and even on cocoa research optimization.

There was no requirement to involve the actual researchers in the proposals as their published findings would have been sufficient evidence for my needs. However, there are already a few researchers expressing interest in taking these proposals further.

One goal of teaching cloud is to produce a set of people who understand the technology and are willing to build cool stuff with it. I’m looking forward to see what comes of these proposals.