From a community-driven flood warning system for Brisbane residents, to a digital ‘Buddy’ to tackle isolation for immigrant families, more than 100 UQ Engineering students shared their bright ideas at the 2024 Innovation Showcase.
Thirty-eight teams of students presented their projects across key fields of electrical engineering and computer science to an enthusiastic audience of more than 200 industry leaders, faculty staff, peers and members of the community.
Professor Markus Barth, Acting Head of UQ’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science said the showcase provided an invaluable opportunity for students to go beyond what they have learned in the classroom and connect with industry.
“We saw a wealth of curiosity-driven projects which offer viable solutions for real-life problems,” Professor Barth said.
“Seeing the connections students made with industry partners, their deep knowledge and enthusiasm to share their innovative ideas, was inspiring.”
Students spent three months working in teams to research a problem and create a solution to address it.
Thirteen innovation awards were selected on the night by industry leaders to recognise the top projects in a range of categories, from best user experience design, to the project with the most commercial potential.
Award winners
- Communications System Upgrade for UQ RobotX Autonomous USV by Harry Steel.
Best Hardware Solution, sponsored by Rinstrum.
- FloodWise by Darcy Weedman, Ethan Jones, Angus Scroggie, Miles Bojorge, Blair Cannon and Zachary Walls.
Best User Experience Design Project, sponsored by Shorthand.
- Mechanical Sonar Scanning Strategies for Fast Underwater Obstacle Detection on a Reef Surveying Autonomous Surface Vessel by Lewis Luck.
Best Systems and Software Engineering Project, sponsored by Reapit.
- Protor VI: The Convertible Airscrew by Jon Van Der Kreek.
Best Project in Avionics and UAV, sponsored by Boeing.
- Investigating the role of electric fields in axon behaviour by Micah Clarke.
Best Biomedical Device or Systems, sponsored by Cochlear.
- Practical Detection of Adversarial Face-Swap Deepfakes for Social Media Platforms by Jingming Dai.
Best Cyber Security and Data Privacy Project, sponsored by Data #3.
- Smart Contract Vulnerabilities and Auditing by Xinyang Li
Best Distributed Ledger Technology Project, sponsored by UQ Ventures.
- Effects of Customised AI Shopping Assistant in Virtual Reality Shopping by Andrew Wong & Yinshu Zhao.
Most Innovative use of XR, sponsored by .au Domain Administration.
- Development of power plant controllers for large-scale renewable energy farms with Siemens S7-1500 PLC by Jun Su.
Best Power & Energy or Electrical Engineering Project, sponsored by Optiver.
- Buddy - Building social connections for immigrant parents by Nisha Vashist, Anthony Longhurst, Heng-Yi Lin and Lonni Miller-Metzner.
Diversity prize, sponsored by Emesent.
- Design and Development of Inline Vector Network Analyser Electronic Calibration Devices by Dylan Fleming.
Best Project in Microwave Photonics and Communications, sponsored by L3 Harris.
- SwingTheory by Daoliang Kan, Peiting Tan, Serene Ye, Yiwei Zhao, William Harvey & Alysha Ismail
Best Software Project, sponsored by GridQube.
- SmartBins by Joy Yin, Jed Hoo, Peter Beardsley and Po-An Ko
Best Project with the most commercial potential, sponsored by .au Domain Administration.
Award winner, Heng-Yi (Henry) Lin, who plans to become a software engineer, said his team’s project, “Buddy” has a personal connection.
“I know from my own family’s experience that migrant parents often experience higher levels of loneliness and face social isolation driven by cultural differences, language barriers, and a lack of local support networks,” Henry said.
“Our team developed “Buddy” a mobile app, with a screen kiosk based at local primary schools that supports parents to overcome these challenges and make meaningful connections.”
Industry sponsor, Tim Laing, Process Engineering Manager at Cochlear, Brisbane was excited about the calibre of aspiring engineers entering the profession.
“The quality of the individuals and the projects they shared was outstanding,” Tim said.
“I feel very confident we have a great bunch of young creatives coming through who will carry the torch for solution-focused engineering and be the next generation of innovators.”
