NeuroNexus

💡 Inspiration At the University of Arizona, student life is fragmented — different apps for courses, separate portals for parking, confusing pantry lines, and no smart planner in sight. As students ourselves, we envisioned a centralized, AI-powered hub that could unify and simplify our campus experience. That vision became NeuroNexus.

🚀 What It Does NeuroNexus is a smart student platform designed to make life easier at UA. It provides:

• 🧑‍🏫 A modern D2L-inspired dashboard
• 📚 Smart Study Assistant that creates personalized weekly plans
• 🌍 Multilingual support with a working language selector (English & Spanish)
• 🅿️ Real-time UA parking availability simulator
• 🚌 Bus tracker for CatTran and SunTran
• 🥫 Pantry queue optimizer: join line, get ETA
• 🗺️ Interactive cultural club map with filters and confetti on join
• 📅 Weekly planner and assignment tracker
• 🤝 Mentor-matching portal

🔧 How We Built It

• Frontend: React + Vite
• UI: TailwindCSS for styling, Chart.js for visualization
• **Language toggle: react-i18next for localization
• AI planner: Local Ollama integration (Gemma model)
• Hosting: Deployed on Netlify
• Project Structure: Modular component-based layout with routing

🧱 Challenges We Ran Into

• Making multiple features work together without overwhelming UX
• Ensuring language switching updated all UI in real time
• Designing realistic simulations for parking, pantry, and bus tracking
• Balancing a visually appealing interface with meaningful functionality
• Integrating AI logic in a lightweight, frontend-driven app

🏆 Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

• Built a fully functional, multi-page web app in under 48 hours
• Designed a clean and intuitive UI inspired by existing student tools
• Implemented smart, real-time simulations for daily student challenges
• Deployed a live app that’s accessible to anyone at UA or beyond

📚 What We Learned

• How to build intelligent features using AI models locally with Ollama
• Best practices for multilingual web apps
• Designing for actual student pain points like parking, class fatigue, and food access
• How to move fast with clean code and focused teamwork

🔮 What’s Next for NeuroNexus

• 🎙️ Add real voice assistant (Web Speech API)
• 🔍 Deeper integration with UA systems (D2L API, Parking API)
• 💬 Add chat-based smart tutoring assistant
• 📱 Launch a mobile version with push notifications
• 🧪 User testing and feedback from real students and faculty

Built With

• a-local-ai-engine-running-the-lightweight-gemma:2b-model.-the-app-is-fully-hosted-on-netlify
• allowing-users-to-switch-languages-instantly-(currently-english-and-spanish).-to-power-personalized-study-insights
• and-react-router-for-seamless-multi-page-navigation.-the-app-includes-multilingual-support-using-react-i18next
• and-the-cultural-club-map-leverages-the-google-maps-embed-api-for-a-familiar
• enabling-quick-and-reliable-deployment.-all-development-was-done-using-vs-code
• modern-frontend-experience
• netlify
• paired-with-tailwindcss-for-responsive-and-clean-styling.-we-used-chart.js-to-visualize-study-data-and-progress
• react
• tailwind
• we-integrated-ollama
• with-version-control-managed-via-git-and-github.-future-features-like-the-voice-assistant-will-utilize-the-web-speech-api