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Capstone projects are vital for seniors in bridging academic learning with real-world applications. These artefacts allow future innovators to showcase their skills, solve meaningful problems and prepare for professional opportunities. Project topics on digital twins, grid interaction and building management offer a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration across a wide range of college majors. Students of Architecture in the College of Built Environments have the potential to explore how digital twins enhance design. Computer Science majors can dive into ontologies, graph databases, and AI-driven analytics that power smart infrastructure. Mechanical Engineering students might focus on optimizing HVAC systems for energy efficiency in new, innovative ways, while Electrical and Computer Engineering focus areas may explore the next generation workflows to simplify IoT integration and build secure and autonomous control systems.
Across university campuses, thousands of students are thinking up new ways to innovate and shape the future. Collaboration with industry can offer opportunities to take their ideas from the lab to the real world. At Willow, we believe collaborative innovation thrives when fresh perspectives meet challenges found in everyday life. By enlisting leaders across campuses where Willow is deployed, we’re connecting with students on solving hard problems with creativity and hands-on experience via senior capstone projects.
Nestled in the world’s largest ponderosa pine forest in Flagstaff, Arizona and framed in a stunning alpine setting, Northern Arizona University is home to Team EcoWattch (pun intended!) and Team WillowWatt exploring innovative solutions with Willow’s AI and digital twin technologies to apply at their own campus in the domain of energy optimization, a topic that is deeply relevant to the current global landscape.
Let’s hear their stories.
Team: Collin Boyer, Avnish Kumar Sinha, Risa Walles, Valentino Valero
In the age of AI and hyper-advanced technology, electricity usage is rising at an unprecedented rate. AI-integrated technologies alone now account for 4% of the earth’s global electricity use. Watching this unfold, it’s more important than ever to look closer at energy usage and emissions and address this trend effectively before it becomes harder to manage.
The team uncovered a significant pain point in the form of annual utilities costs. Every year, NAU spends tens of millions on utilities alone, and the trend is moving upward due to rising energy prices, new campus infrastructure, and EV growth.
“As college students, this is incredibly concerning. Our tuition that we spend on this school is being dumped right into utilities bills and heavy emissions. We know we have to do something different,” Valentino shares. Traditional energy campaigns create initial action but struggle to maintain engagement. This motivated an exploration in the form of a capstone.
The team researched what drives college student engagement and found the answer in friendly competition through sports and clubs. “We realized we could leverage our competitive spirit to create sustained engagement where typical campaigns fail,” explains Collin.
This called for teams and identities students could rally behind. The project team struck gold in the form of a friendly competition between dorms. Student housing represents a huge portion of NAU’s energy usage in the form of devices left on, lights and air conditioning running constantly. Using Willow’s Public API, the team tapped into the digital twin in production, deployed on their campus buildings. They understood how the Knowledge Graph and ontology describe physical systems in the dorms and combine real-time data sources to generate insights.
With the mobile app tapping into real-time data signals, they started monitoring each dorm’s usage with a points-based leaderboard. Dorms with ‘below average usage’ earn points, while those ‘above average’ lose points.
“This simplicity is by design,” Avnish emphasizes. “We want our app to be so straightforward that anyone can see their building’s usage and observe impact in real-time. Willow’s digital twin breaks down data silos and does the heavy lift.”
“We’re asking students to care about energy in a creative way,” says Risa. “We’re involving our community to compete and have fun while generating tangible results. That’s what makes this sustainable.”
Through this friendly challenge to save, the group is already seeing a quantifiable impact on energy reduction. Buildings are consuming less electricity as word of mouth has spread. The student community is deeply engaged and the capstone project is solving a real-world problem in real-time.
Team: Ayla Tudor, Elliott Kinsley, Luke Christopher Bowen
When the team first came together, they felt united by one big idea: using AI to drive impact in the real world and finding a project that was both meaningful and technical. Tapping into Willow’s vision of enabling NAU’s campus to be grid-aware and eventually become grid-interactive, the team landed on a problem statement: to forecast campus energy usage and identify opportunities for greater efficiency.
Based on the premise that peak loads are a significant contributor to both overall energy costs and emissions, the team is building a tool that predicts when campus buildings will hit peak demand and suggests ways to reduce or shift workloads. This underscores the importance of proactive monitoring and optimization.
“Our hope is that this will develop and generate new insights into energy behavior and pave the way for smarter, more sustainable operations across our campus,” shared Elliott.
The journey towards a successful outcome is not always straightforward, and there were many learnings along the way. The team discovered things like understanding when it’s ok to take shortcuts and when it isn’t, working with timelines and the importance of data quality. As the adage goes: garbage in, garbage out.
The project kicked off with the team focusing on planning and laying out the groundwork. Most of the time was spent understanding Willow’s platform and how NAU buildings currently manage energy. “One of our biggest lessons was understanding what ‘good quality data’ actually means,” explains Elliott. “We tried to skip a few steps early on. First, we used a dataset from Kaggle, but the scale was totally off. Then we tried to work with available meter data, but it was partial and didn’t represent the entire building. We requested consolidated campus data, but it was taking much longer than expected. Finally, we were able to get our hands on complete building datasets from Willow and the Facilities team.”
“We’ve always been passionate about leveraging AI to make a difference, especially when it comes to sustainability,” says Luke. “Working with Willow gave us a chance to explore how artificial intelligence and digital twin technologies could optimize energy usage across NAU’s campus. It’s been exciting and challenging to push our theory and technical skills while contributing to something that truly matters.”
While the semester isn’t over yet and there’s still plenty of work to be done, the progress the group has made feels rewarding. “From overcoming early setbacks to seeing our ideas take shape, this project has been a true learning journey,” reflects Ayla. “We’re excited to keep developing, experimenting, and sharing what we discover as WillowWatt continues to take form.”
As projects continue with final reports due by the end of the semester, both capstone teams are eager to see how their solutions evolve and get adopted.
Collaborating with Willow’s domain experts along with professors and academic leaders has been a valuable exchange for students involved in the capstone projects. It is an opportunity to creatively apply classroom learnings via in-use technologies on campus to address real world problems. For the industry, early student engagement is a step toward building stronger partnerships with academia, enabling research and innovation to work together.
We invite students and universities to reach out and collaborate with industry and with Willow on capstone projects. We can’t wait to see how out-of-box thinking and problem-solving drives innovation across disciplines and shape the future of intelligent built environments.