Smith Students Unleash Custom AI and Web Tools for Local Pet Care Business

The humans at Wild at Heart Pet Care Inc. are wagging with excitement over the new AI tools a group of undergraduates at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business built to help manage customers and business functions.

The project was a capstone for senior information systems students in John Bono’s “Information Systems Projects” class. Teams were tasked with building an information system prototype, incorporating AI components to address a business challenge, for a local small business or nonprofit. All teams used various AI tools to build their systems.

“I’m so proud of all of these students,” said Bono, clinical professor or information systems. “These were great projects to showcase all the skills they learned as information systems majors at the Smith School, from traditional systems thinking to emerging AI applications and technologies.”

The winning team — Caden Aruta, Arturo Delgado, Molly Gilgunn, Adam Ruder, Sebestyen Toszegi-Sabath and Kristy Truong — worked with Wild at Heart Pet Care, a local pet care business, to address various tasks around dog walking, pet sitting and other services. 

The students built a web app for Wild at Heart that customers can use to book and pay for appointments. They also built an AI-powered chatbot that can answer customer questions and provide updated pricing, booking policies and pet care procedures. The students also created dashboards for staff to manage appointments, billing, their website, operations and other business functions.

Kathryn Sabath from Wild at Heart Pet Care was thrilled with the result. The students also got a lot out of the project.

“One of the biggest lessons was how much system design depends on understanding the business process and client’s needs when building the prerequisite technology,” said Adam Ruder ’26. “Understanding where Wild at Heart’s manual processes were breaking down and where automation could be appropriate based on her needs was something connected directly to the core IS skills we have learned here at Smith.”

“We learned what it actually takes to modernize a small business, not just technically but analytically,” said Sebestyen Toszegi-Sabeth ’26, who was also on the winning team. He said students used structured frameworks they learned through the information systems curriculum.

Jake Holland from Capital One and Ajay Shankar and Laura Zimmer from Deloitte served as judges.

Other teams in Bono’s class worked with Frederick, Md.-based entertainment venue Fourth Dimension Fun Center; UMD’s Japanese American Student Association; and Class 520, a Thai-inspired rolled ice cream business.

Toszegi-Sabeth said the projects will help him and his classmates in their future jobs.

“The kind of thinking that we had to do for this project is directly transferable into careers like consulting, banking, and any other role where we need to work directly with a client and evaluate a problem they are trying to solve,” he said.