Photo-booths that give 360 degree photos, biometric facial scanning applications to help law enforcement locate criminals, a virtual reality (VR) tour of the Giant Magellan Telescope - all this and more was presented at the TechLauncher Showcase on Thursday 11 October.
TechLauncher is a program that enables teams of ANU students to take their great, innovative ideas, and apply them to a real-world project. These projects not only help students develop their professional skills, but also help bring a positive impact to society.
Over 30 student teams presented their projects at the showcase held at the Renewables Innovation Hub.
“TechLauncher teams formally comprise of students from later year undergraduate and masters level programs,” said Charles Gretton, convenor of the TechLauncher program.
“The program exposes these students to a range of career and professional networking opportunities that position our graduates to succeed.”
Teams work in a broad spectrum of settings, with clients from government, industry, and our university’s research labs. The program also has close ties with the Canberra innovation community, which encourages students to pursue their own start-ups.
Bachelor of Software Engineering student, Paige Brown, worked with a team of palaeoecologists from the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. Her project focused on using pollen to reconstruct the damage done to the ecosystem in Indonesia 600,000 years ago.
“The TechLauncher program has set me up for the future by giving me real-world project experience. This has helped me develop skills that will be essential throughout my career,” says Paige.
Working on a solution which helps other people has been a rewarding experience for Paige.
“The most interesting thing I encountered was the lack of technology that previously existed in the field. It has been incredibly rewarding to help the team simplify this process and develop a system that makes their work easier.”
The TechLauncher Showcase also saw 12 student interns from the Computer Science Internship Program present their work to industry partners.
Divyanshu Chauhan (Master of Computing) interned with Aristotle Cloud Services Australia. This start-up company uses a tool called Aristotle metadata registry that helps make sense out of data.
“Metadata gives us the power to describe what, how and why data was collected. Presently, all this information has to be filled out manually”, says Divyanshu.
“The project that I have worked on helps automate database extraction, which helps save a huge amount of time and also reduces the manual task.”
The internship program helped Divyanshu learn more of about current industry demands.
“I learned a lot of new technologies that are in demand by employers. Moreover, it has increased my network in the community.”
With guidance and mentorship from university-based academics, professional tutors, and industry mentors, TechLauncher helps students identify an optimal career path and realise their ambition.
Learn more about the TechLauncher program here.