LabTab

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  Homepage

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  Student Application

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  Professor Dashboard

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  Application Review

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  Student Inbox

Inspiration

As students ourselves, we witnessed the frustrating reality of academic research discovery. Students spend countless hours cold-emailing dozens of professors, only to receive silence or polite rejections, or endlessly scroll through faculty websites trying to decipher research descriptions. When we surveyed students about their biggest challenges, the answer was unanimous: "I can't tell if professors' research aligns with my interests."

What it does

LabTab uses AI to automatically match students with professors for research opportunities. Our platform analyzes research compatibility by comparing student interests against professor research areas, publications, and current projects, generating compatibility scores with detailed explanations. No more cold emails or endless website scrolling.

How we built it

We developed a full-stack platform using Node.js/Express backend, React.js frontend, and AWS Bedrock for AI-powered semantic analysis. We implemented MySQL for user data, DynamoDB for research profiles, and web scraping to automatically update professor information. Our AI system goes beyond simple keyword matching to understand nuanced research compatibility.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was designing an AI system that understands research compatibility beyond keywords. Research interests often span multiple disciplines, requiring our system to understand context, methodology, and academic level appropriateness. We also tackled data quality issues with dynamic web scraping and validation systems.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We created a working prototype that successfully matches students with relevant professors using intelligent AI analysis. Our system reduces the research discovery process from weeks of cold-emailing to minutes of targeted matching.

What we learned

We discovered that students typically email 20-30 professors before finding one opportunity, while professors are overwhelmed with irrelevant inquiries. The problem isn't lack of opportunities—it's lack of intelligent matching.

What's next for LabTab

We plan to integrate with university systems, expand our AI capabilities with more sophisticated research analysis, and scale to multiple universities. Our goal is to make research collaboration as easy as swiping right.Retry

Built With

• amazon-dynamodb
• express.js
• mongodb
• node.js
• openai
• react.js