Southeastern students dominate Nexus Competition

Three teams of students from Southeastern Louisiana University had success in the recent DevDays Nexus Louisiana competition, held in partnership with the Water Institute. Nexus Louisiana creates technological challenges and holds competitions to help solve those problems, and to do so in a commercializable way. This year’s competition theme was using computer science to assist with environmental monitoring.

Out of a highly competitive field, Southeastern teams took home both first and second place, with a third team reaching the finals. The students developed sophisticated AI solutions to solve real-world environmental challenges facing the Water Institute and the Louisiana coast.

“I am incredibly proud of our students’ performance at the DevDays Nexus Louisiana competition. Seeing our teams take both first and second place and having a third reach the finals is testament to the high-level technical talent we are cultivating at Southeastern,” said Computer Science Professor Ghassan Alkadi. “These students didn’t just write code; they built sophisticated AI systems with 97% accuracy that solve massive data challenges for the Water Institute. Their work in automating months of manual research into mere seconds demonstrates how our Computer Science department is leading the way in protecting Louisiana’s coastal future.”

Winners of a $6,000 prize, the first place team members included Subin Bista, Niraj Bhatta, Mahesh Pandit, and Aakash Poudel, all from Nepal. The team developed an AI-powered Mosaic Analysis Platform designed to automate the massive manual workload of coastal scientists. The technology created was a custom-built AI model that detects birds in high-altitude aerial drone and helicopter imagery. For the team’s impact, 97% accuracy was achieved with reduced analysis time from months to just seconds, allowing scientists to explore data across multiple dimensions efficiently. 

Winners of a $3,000 prize, the second place team members included Satyam Pathak, Nikhil Shah, and Alish Dhamaia, all from Nepal, and Olisemeka Nmarkwe of Nigeria. The group built a fully open-source, deployment-ready SaaS platform for bird colony monitoring. The technology created and called their “Nest” suite included NestVision (using Ultralytics YOLOv8), NestChat (an AI chatbot for 11 years of survey data), and FloodWatch for coastal flooding risk intelligence. 

The finalist team members included Amber Kirk of Hammond and Keira Stewart of Baton Rouge. They reached the finals with Coastal Wildlife Monitor, an environmental monitoring platform. Using a robust stack of .NET Aspire, React, and Python Fast API, the team combined YOLO models with Google’s Gemini AI for multimodal ecological analysis,  integrating external NOAA and Louisiana coastal erosion data.

“It is inspiring to see our international students working alongside our American students to place Southeastern at the forefront of AI and environmental innovation in Louisiana,” Alkadi said. “These victories highlight the strength of our Computer Science Department and the incredible career readiness of our students.”

For more information about the Computer Science Department go to southeastern.edu/computerscience.