Lion Research Connect

Overview

Penn State Behrend has a strong reputation in regards to academic research projects. The current processes for faculty members finding students and students looking for research projects is time-consuming and relying on personal connections. The organization proposed a website where faculty members can post projects and students can view published projects by searching by keywords.

Objectives

The project aims to create a web application facilitating the posting and application process for research projects. Students and faculty members will authenticate using SSO. Students can search and apply for projects based on various criteria, securely upload resumes, while faculty can post projects, review applications, and contact recommended students.

Approach

• Had sponsor meetings to gather requirements.
• Took the existing web page as a site reference for the styling.
• Implemented project list view to display all the available research projects.
• Implemented student/project recommendation algorithm based on the certain fields and keywords generated by users. 
• Integrated third party sources such as Microsoft Graph API or Microsoft SSO to allow users to login using university authentication and send automatic emails for research project application related features. 
• Ran unit testing and integration testing using different testing different extensions such as Selenium IDE and PHPUnit. 
• Validated results with running implemented features with test data and checking the outcomes.

Outcomes

• Faculty members will save time gathering students for their research projects.
• Faculty members will view students’ resumes faster. 
• Students will save time looking for research projects and applying to the ones they are interested in. 
• Student involvement in pursuing research opportunities will increase. 
• The sponsor will encourage the organization for more research collaborations.