On April 17, those projects were presented at the Innovate ECE: Demo Day, an in-person showcase held in the Klaus Advanced Computing Building. During the hour-long event, students demonstrated their work and spoke directly with attendees about their ideas, design decisions, and technical challenges. 

Among the standout projects on display was one by Andrew Lemons, a fourth-year student who earned both the Grand Prize and a Best in Thread Award for Information Internetworks. His project combined radio systems and mesh networking into a working system that illustrated how information moves, connects, and is used across networks. 

“I wanted to build something self-directed that clearly represents what I’ve learned, rather than just completing an assignment,” Lemons said. “The idea of taking an abstract thread like Information Internetworks and turning it into a concrete, working system was especially appealing.” 

Lemons, who will graduate this semester, also noted that projects like his help clarify how threads function beyond individual courses. 

“It’s easy to think of threads in terms of classes rather than a cohesive way of thinking about an engineering field,” he said. “Projects like this show how the concepts actually come together in practice.”

Also on display at the Demo Day was an embedded alarm system for houseplants, created by Kayla Becker, a first‑year electrical engineering student and winner of the People’s Choice Award. Her system uses soil moisture sensing and external plant data to determine when a plant needs water, applying calibration and averaging techniques to reduce sensor noise. 

“I think sometimes the title of a Thread can be overwhelming because there are so many realms of ECE,” Becker said. “Being able to focus that definition on a specific topic or industry is really helpful to understanding the threads. As a student, I find the threads incredibly helpful for shaping my curriculum and my career planning.” 

Other projects demonstrated the diversity of the Threads, from digital signal processing through a fully functional electronic piano, to a systems architecture projects that broke complex processors and compilers into accessible, working components. 

Winning projects will be featured on the ECE Thread webpage and across ECE communication channels, extending their impact beyond Demo Day.  

“This wasn’t just a competition,” Raju said. “It was a learning space, a mentoring space, and a way for students to see themselves reflected in the curriculum. That’s exactly what we hoped Innovate ECE would become.”