You are invited to participate in the ME170 Stanford ME capstone course, designed to be the culmination of the Stanford BS ME degree.  Partner with the Stanford ME department, where for 6 months, 4-person project team(s) made up of Senior-year Mechanical Engineering undergraduates work on a problem that you provide in the general theme of clean energy, transportation, health, and/or sustainability while engaging with community

Give Stanford ME undergraduate students an awareness and appreciation for how they can make a difference in the world

You will have the opportunity to interact with some of the most talented and creative undergraduates

Promotes engineering research and development in an area of interest for you and your organization.  Many student teams can engage in different aspects of a common problem

Provides your organization with additional opportunities and exposure to Stanford faculty and undergraduate students, establishing a relationship with Stanford University.

Course instruction is by Capstone Course Director/Lecturer Jeff Wood, with 25 years industry experience leading organizations in product development and manufacturing, and Shoshanah Cohen with 20+ years industry experience in supply chain and consulting organizations, with a growing list of guest speakers. The students receive excellent guidance regarding their projects.

Connects you to end-of-quarter presentations to see all projects conducted in the course, which are open to the public

Provides access to final reports written by the teams, which are posted and publicly available at Stanford Libraries

The course runs Autumn and Winter quarters every year, with enrollment expected in the 45-55 student range, resulting in 12-15 project teams.

To engage with the course, we request $30,000 support which is used to cover administrative costs as well as project-related expenses. 1 project proposal will result in 1-3 project teams.

Projects are done by students as a learning experience, contracts for course projects are not allowed. Projects should enable students to explore a problem that the partner is interested in researching, but is not on any critical path or an expected part of any partner deliverable.  Students are not working “for hire”.

At the beginning of the term, the projects will be presented to students and they will nominate the projects on which they want to work.  Liaisons providing projects will need to be present at the second day of class to pitch the projects to the students.

This is a 4-unit course, meaning that students are each expected to spend ~12 hours/week on the class, so students have approximately 30-35% time dedicated to their project. Students will generally be placed into teams of 4 for each project.

In accordance with university policy, students must be able to openly present their work to classmates, instructors, guests, etc

Any intellectual property or data resulting from these projects will be retained by Stanford. 

It is the intent of the Faculty member(s) responsible for ME170 that all class results will be presented in an open public forum at the conclusion of the course.  

Teaching staff are prepared to meet with the partner team to flush out details of project proposals, to ensure they are suitable for the students and the course.  To get the conversation started, Liaisons are requested to complete a project brief using the template provided below.  

The success of a project in ME170 depends greatly on the existence of an effective company liaison.  It is important that the liaison is willing and able to meet with the student team regularly, serves as the point-of-contact for the team, and has project background information to assist in developing design requirements and concepts.  Liaisons should plan on a face-to-face meeting with the student team during the initial stages of the project in the first few weeks of the first quarter, and at least two other meetings over the course of each quarter.  These can be in person or video/teleconference meetings.   Liaison is also requested to attend course design reviews held in the middle and end of each quarter. 

We are accepting proposals for the 2025-2026 year.  If you are interested in participating in the class, please reach out to Jeff Wood at jwood11@stanford.edu to get the conversation started!  To define a project please complete the project brief below.

For any given class year, we are looking for initial project briefs by the end of July, and finalizing briefs and arrangements by the end of August

Project Brief Form