Motorola Labs Challenge

During the Spring of 2008, ten Notre Dame undergraduate students, under the guidance of Professors Aaron Striegel and Christian Poellabauer, participated in the 2008 Motorola Labs Challenge, a 4 month project to develop novel content sharing applications on WiFi- equipped mobile handheld devices. In conjunction with the Capstone design course (CSE 40422 - Computer System Design), Motorola Labs generously provided MC-35 smartphones equipped with Wi-Fi and the initial design requirements.

During the challenge, students competed in three teams. Team 1 consisted of seniors Ryan Gross, Nick Hopf, Patrick McGowan, and Sean O'Toole; team 2 consisted of senior Jeff Simmer and juniors Ed Suski and A.J. Sporinsky; team 3 consisted of seniors Kyle Marks, Sean Murray, and Stephen Woods. Students were tasked with creating design documents, proof of concept builds, and a fully working demo over the course of the challenge.

During the last week of classes, Dr. Shivajit Mohapatra from Motorola Labs visited Notre Dame to recognize all participants and to present prizes to the most outstanding team (Team 2: Jeff Simmer, Ed Suski, A.J. Sporinsky). The software developed by the winning team will be demonstrated to researchers and managers at Motorola Labs and both undergraduate and graduate researchers at Notre Dame will continue to develop the software and perform field tests (which potentially includes a large-scale test during a soccer game in a stadium in Mexico).

Congratulations to all participants for their outstanding efforts!