UMD’s App Dev Club Bridges Gap Between Classroom and Industry

On a weeknight in the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering, students gather in teams around laptops, reviewing system designs and debugging code. What appears to be a corporate engineering meeting is, in fact, the weekly work of the University of Maryland’s App Dev Club. 

The student-run group was founded in 2022 to address a common problem faced by undergraduates. While courses provide programming knowledge, they often do not cover the full scope of enterprise-grade development. The founders created the club to help close that gap. 

“Students learn the core concepts of programming in class, but there’s a difference between that and building production-ready code,” said Atheesh Thirumalairajan, the club’s president. “We wanted to give students a way to practice those skills before they step into an internship.”

Alongside Thirumalairajan (B.S. ’27, computer science), the club is guided by a team of executive members who help organize projects, workshops and events. The leadership team includes Vice President Hannah Chan (B.S. ’26, computer science), Executive Director Amelia Harn (B.S. ’26, computer science), and Managing Director Ashna Nayak (B.S. ’27, computer science). Together, they coordinate the club’s operations to ensure that students have access to opportunities to build skills and collaborate on real-world projects.

Hands-On Work

App Dev partners with companies to give students experience on real-world projects. Members learn technical practices such as documenting code, ensuring scalability and working within teams that mimic a corporate setting. For many, these experiences are helpful when applying for internships.

“The value is that students can say they worked on something real for a company,” Thirumalairajan said. “That makes a difference in an interview or when they’re talking to recruiters.”

The club has expanded rapidly since its founding three years ago. Today, it has approximately 300 active members and receives over 1,000 applications each semester.

Membership is interdisciplinary, with most students coming from computer science or engineering. However, projects have also required contributions from students in biomedical, aerospace, and business fields. Nontechnical members manage communications, finances and outreach, while others focus on code development.

Broadening Scope

While it began with a focus on mobile and web applications, App Dev now takes on projects in fields ranging from game design to quantum computing. The club’s partnership with IonQ, a local quantum computing company, introduced semester-long research projects for students.

“Our mission is still to give students hands-on experience, but we’ve expanded the kinds of opportunities we provide,” Thirumalairajan said. “Now, you’ll find people working in areas like cloud computing, virtual reality and quantum research.”

Harn oversees the club’s collaboration with more than a dozen external organizations, including Amazon Kuiper, General Dynamics and Booz Allen Hamilton. One project with Amazon Kuiper involved developing machine learning-based software to identify locations for global satellite ground stations.

In the healthcare sector, students collaborated with Children’s National Hospital on technology to detect blocked tracheostomy tubes in pediatric patients. The system alerts parents and medical staff when obstructions occur, providing data that can guide immediate care.

Student Pathways

Participation often leads to exceptional internships and jobs. This summer, more than 80% of App Dev’s executive and technology leaders interned at big tech companies. Alums have gone on to positions at prominent tech companies, including Google, NVIDIA and Apple.

For Thirumalairajan, involvement in App Dev shaped his own career path. He joined as an engineer before moving into leadership roles and ultimately interning as a Software Engineer at Amazon. 

“I didn’t have an internship when I first got involved,” he said. “Working on projects and leading teams gave me the experience I needed to connect with opportunities outside the club.”

He also mentioned that club administrators attribute much of the organization’s growth to its structure.

“We function more like 300 mini-leaders than one executive board directing everything,” Thirumalairajan said. “That helps us scale and sustain partnerships.”

For Chan, involvement in various engineering and leadership roles at App Dev led her to explore the space of product management and ultimately to an internship at Microsoft.

“The opportunities that our club provided in terms of envisioning a solution for a stakeholder’s problem directly correlated with Microsoft’s expectations from Product Management Interns,” Chan said. “Additionally, App Dev provided a lot of opportunities towards leading teams and interacting with customers, which really strengthened my ability to communicate effectively and present myself well in interviews for internships.”

Looking Ahead

App Dev plans to launch a hackathon aimed at first-year students, providing them with early access to project work and industry experience. Leaders are also developing collaborations with the business school and ROTC for tailored applications.

The club plans to enhance the Bootcamp program, where students from various majors are taught industry-standard programming skills and paired with exceptional alums working at Big Tech companies. Additionally, the club intends to open more events to the broader UMD community, providing students outside the organization with opportunities to participate in workshops and learn about computing.

“The demand is clear from how many people apply each semester,” Thirumalairajan said. “Our focus is making room for more students to participate and learn.”

—Story by Samuel Malede Zewdu, CS Communications