Design and development of a social network platform for research community

Social media has gained popularity and is being widely used in the 21st century. The number of social media users has been increasing rapidly since its existence. It has impacted major fields such as business, politics, and entertainment. The education sector too has observed the influence of social media. It has revolutionized the way students and academics learn and acquire new information. As easy and beneficial these platforms are when learning and sharing information, they still raise some concerns among academics and researchers. The thin line between a professional and personal connection on these sites have limited academics from using these platforms to its full potential. This project alleviates the above-mentioned concern. The primary objective of this project is to design and develop a social network based platform targeting the research and academic community. ‘AcKuu’, which stands for ‘Academic Community’, is a social media-based web application dedicated entirely for academic and research related activities. Like any other social media platform, ‘AcKuu’ was designed to facilitate the sharing of information and creating connections with features catering to academia and research activities in particular. The common and user-specific use cases that enable the web application to serve as a social networking platform were identified and developed. Moreover, the user interface of the application was designed such that novice users could understand and navigate through the system with ease. The application enables students and professors to share articles, documents, images, and videos pertaining to or outside their field of knowledge with one another. They can view and edit the content they share, like and comment on different posts shared by their connections, monitor their activities on the application, receive notifications on friend requests and activities of other users regarding their content. Additionally, professors can also share PhD scholarship opportunities available in their universities. These opportunities can be shared publicly or just with their connections. In parallel to the web application, a recommendation engine which recommends these PhD scholarship opportunities to potential users based on their eligibility and areas of interest, is researched on and implemented.Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science