A new “WUSTL Dining” app will provide students on the go with a way to check menu and nutritional information for Washington University dining facilities from their iPhones.

The app features “Menus” and “Nutrition” functions that pull real-time data from FoodPro, the service Dining Services uses for its online information. It also has a map showing locations of all the dining facilities on campus.

Fifth year engineering student Shubho Sadhu and senior Oliver Jones worked together to develop the app, which is now available for free on the Apple App Store.

Jill Duncan, director of marketing for dining services, believes that the mobile app will make dining information more easily accessible to students.

“Students really do use mobile devices for everything they do in their lives, so now we’re a part of that. And a student doesn’t have to sit down and look at a computer anymore. You can look at it no matter where you’re at. It’s really a cool thing,” Duncan said.

Sadhu and Jones began developing the iPhone app in fall of 2010 for a project in a computer science class that focuses on iOS software development.

“We just knew people had expressed a demand for an app like this, and we thought it would be feasible just because the infrastructure already existed on Dining Services’ website, so we thought, ‘Hey why not? We’ve got to do something.’ We thought it would be useful,” Jones said.

Sadhu also serves as a member of the Dining Services Advisory Committee and worked closely with Dining Services to develop the app.

“We had Dining Services’ support from the get-go. They’re good to work with, one of the more responsive departments here,” he said.

Duncan recently showed off the app at a conference she attended on technology in university dining services.

“From the Bon Appétit staff side, we were just amazed at the process that they’ve gone through. I think it’s been a really great partnership on our side and then going through a lot of clean up and finding a lot of things that we needed to focus on so that their app could actually work,” Duncan said.

She believes the app has helped to put the University’s Dining Services on the cutting edge technologically compared to other universities.

“I don’t think there are that many schools out there doing this, and now we’re on board with the schools that are. And I think it’s important for the students who want to know what they’re eating,” Duncan said.

The University published the app under the guidance of the Mobile Computing Initiative, which helps members of the University community develop apps for mobile and web devices.

WUSTL Dining is the second app to go through a full process of review and approval and be made available on the App Store. A course listings app called Course Monkey, developed by graduate Dan Brewster, became available earlier this year.

In the future, Sadhu and Jones hope to expand and improve upon the app by providing real-time operating hours information for each of the dining locations around campus, corresponding to a color code on the current “Map” feature.

They also hope to eventually add a WebFood feature to the app, which is not possible with WebFood’s current Flash-based configuration.

Versions of the app for Android and Windows Mobile operating systems are currently in beta and under review. They are expected to become available for download in their respective app stores by the end of the school year.

Duncan hopes the nutrition information available on the app will help students make healthier choices and know what they are eating.

“If we can provide that information for people to make clear choices for themselves, I think that’s really important,” she said.