ANU computing students showcase real-world innovation through TechLauncher 2025

From AI-powered fashion to VR telescopes, instant marking to AI that sounds ‘Aussie’, this year’s student work once again highlighted the creative and technical depth of computing students The Australian National University (ANU).

Held in October, the Semester 2 2025 ANU College of Systems and Society Showcase brought together final-year students and researchers with industry partners and academic advisers to celebrate projects that tackle real-world challenges through technology. The showcase reflected the many ways computing can make a difference in people’s lives, and the bright future of innovative researchers and graduates emerging from ANU.

From AI and machine learning to health innovation and digital heritage, the latest research, internship, and TechLauncher projects shone a spotlight on how students are transforming academic learning into real-world impact.

Each year, the flagship TechLauncher program connects groups of ANU computing students with real-world clients to solve problems that matter. As the latest semester draws to a close, let’s take a look at a a selection of some of the incredible TechLauncher projects on display.

AIPatternGen: AI for fashion design

Team: Xiyang Huang, Yelon Wang, Nafisa Nawal, Yutong Wang, Xiaoyu Lu, Pan Zeng and Yilin Ding

AIPatternGen aims to make fashion design faster, smarter and more accessible. By automating garment pattern-making with AI and computer vision, the project streamlines a traditionally manual process – empowering designers, artists and creative technologists to experiment, save time and push creative boundaries. The team delivered a working prototype that generates cutting patterns directly from uploaded images, along with a technical roadmap for future development.

Big Dream: A Unity-based VR Experience for GMT and Dreams Telescope

In partnership with astronomer Tony Travouillon, ANU computing students created an immersive virtual reality experience that lets users explore telescopes at the Siding Spring Observatory in NSW. The project focused on the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile, creating an Oculus Quest-based application that blends education and outreach to make cutting-edge astronomy accessible to the public.

Students Choice

Team: Yuhan (Lexie) Xie, Si Chen, Yuhua (Owen) Hong, Xinwei (Vivian) Li and Xingyu Du

Students Choice is a platform built by students, for students. The peer-driven review site helps users discover universities, share experiences, and make informed academic and social decisions. The TechLauncher team delivered a scalable, user-friendly system with features including login, search, user boards, and moderation and safety controls. The project evolved from a prototype into a fully functioning community website.

PlantDis

Every year, up to 40 per cent of global crops are lost to disease. PlantDis offers a smart, user-friendly solution: an AI-powered mobile app that provides instant and accurate plant disease diagnosis using a cascaded transfer-learning pipeline. Designed for farmers, gardeners and researchers, the app empowers users to improve crop health and support sustainable agriculture. Simply capture a photo of a leaf, and the AI analyses it in seconds to provide a high-precision diagnosis and practical advice.

Ginan-UI

Team: Sam Greenwood, Ryan Foote, Harry Baard, Kenita Tan, Fan Jin, Yuliang Yang, and Songxuan He.

Ginan-UI transforms the powerful but complex Ginan software developed by Geoscience Australia into an intuitive, easy-to-use application. Ginan is a high-precision global navigation satellite system (GNSS) data processing tool used by researchers, surveyors, and scientists to produce centimetre-accurate positioning reports. This TechLauncher project delivers a clean visual interface that makes Ginan faster, simpler and far more accessible, both in the lab and out in the field.

JoeyLLM: Aussie AI that speaks our voice

Team: Zhesu Zhang, Qilun Song, Huiru Wu, Yingge Zhao and Jiayue Xiong

Every time you use AI, chances are the system behind it was built overseas. That’s where Australian company SouthernCross AI steps in – with JoeyLLM, an open-source large language model trained on Australian data. This TechLauncher team helped filter and fine-tune content to capture local slang, cultural references and context, creating an AI model that sounds and thinks like an Aussie. The project produced working demos for conversational and Q&A applications and is fully open-source on GitHub, enhancing Australia’s capacity to develop its own AI systems.

SnapMathsAI

Team: Zhaoyu Chen, Ruizhe Du, Zhuocheng Song, Xiaotong He, Sunny Zhang, Harry Xia, Gea Linggar Galih

SnapMathsAI is an app that checks handwritten mathematics instantly using optical character recognition and AI. Built for teachers, parents and tutors, it reduces manual marking time by up to 90 per cent. The team worked on a functional cross-platform app that uses Optical Camera Recognition and AI to mark on the spot and receive instant feedback.

OrthoVis 2.0

Team: Hanna Truong, Punit Deshwal, Murph Shaw, Avery Xu, Zhiyuan Hou, Aung Moe Thet, and Ruohua Li

Collaborating with Viortec and The Canberra Hospital, this TechLauncher team set out to modernise OrthoVis – an orthopaedic imaging tool that helps doctors and researchers study how bones and joints move in real life, without invasive procedures. While OrthoVis is highly accurate, processing a single set of CT scans could take more than 18 hours. Working alongside ANU experts Dr Catherine Galvin and Dr Joe Lynch, the team rebuilt the system from the ground up. The result is a fully automated computer vision tool with a clean, modern interface that reduces processing times from hours to just minutes, making bone analysis faster and more accessible.

Pagan Warriors: interactive archaeology

Team: Aden Remedios-Cole, Maggie Sun, Marcus Barta, Ren Ren, Ryan Yoon, Sam Mason-Cox and Yilun Fan

Blending digital heritage with storytelling, Pagan Warriors aims to reconstruct a medieval burial site as an interactive 3D experience. The project allows students, educators, historians and the public to explore and study ancient pagan sites through high-fidelity models and immersive design. Guided by Dr Ash Lenton and Thomas Biedermann, the team created an accessible online environment that brings archaeology to life.

Learn more about ANU TechLauncher and Computing Internship program opportunities