ISO-NE partners with UMass students for semester-long application development project

Leaders from ISO New England’s Information Services department teamed up with computer science students this spring to work on a semester-long application development project. The students, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, gained valuable real-life experience—and the ISO, in addition to benefitting from the students’ skills, had a chance to help develop the next generation of application developers.

Led by Chris Lemay, supervisor, Markets & Financial Application Development, along with Mark Bucciarelli, supervisor, Corporate Application Development, and Suresh Jatti, director, Architecture & Enterprise Development, the project involved developing new displays for a tool that helps the ISO’s technicians and software administrators monitor the organization’s myriad systems and applications.

“The final deliverables were impressive,” Lemay said, adding that the students’ work enhanced the capability of the system.

Lemay, Bucciarelli, and Jatti worked with a class of 50 students who were divided into 10 teams, each assigned specific duties in the development process. Teams presented weekly updates to the ISO’s application development group before ultimately merging into two teams or “tracks” and producing fully functional applications developed in Java.

The students completed their work in May. Following on the success of this project, the ISO plans to partner with another UMass-Amherst computer science class in fall 2023.