Students' Group Design Projects enjoy success

Our second-year undergraduates exhibited their Group Design Projects this week. And their success in addressing the challenges they were set impressed the external companies and clients they were working for.

Three teams took home awards this year for their work on developing a clearer way to notate music, improving supply chain resilience, and sourcing second hand electronic components.

The Group Design Projects are an annual challenge for second-year students. Working in teams of six or seven, they have to meet a brief set by an external client. As ever, this year's projects spanned a wide spectrum. 

Videos of all the students' projects will be shown at our Department Open Day on Saturday 16 March as part of the Cambridge Festival.

Team Bravo were charged with creating a tool that could offer predictive text suggestions to users of Braille keyboards; team Oscar were tasked with using AI techniques to analyse aerial images of growing crops to see if they are taking up enough soil nitrogen.

Team Whisky were developing the infrastructure for a searchable globe that users could interact with to learn about local people's lives and communities; team Lima were designing an app to help people with memory loss trigger and record stories from their long-term memories.

The project clients and members of the Department came to see an exhibition of all the students' work yesterday, and they - and the students themselves - voted for projects they felt had done best. There were three winners in all.

Most Impressive Technical Achievement - team Mike
The award went to team Mike for their project on 'Optimising Music Notation'. Students Albert, Claire, Dron, Sky, Sam and Jack worked with a member of the University's Department of Music on an alternative style for notating music that has been found to improve performance. Their task was to define a specification language for this modified style and a pipeline for rendering it.  The runners-up were teams Delta and November.

Most impressive Professional Achievement - team Quebec
The award went to team Quebec (Andrei, Hannah, Jing, LT, Kevin and Sol) for their project on 'Supply Chain Resilience' to enhance the efficiency and resilience of global supply chains, which have been affected by events such as the Covid pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine. The students had to create a map that showed users visually ways of improving routes for delivering products and allowed them to compare and contrast CO2 emissions, cost, reliability and robustness. The runners-up for this award were teams Delta and Tango.

The Contribution to a Better Future Award - team Delta
This award went to Team Delta (Christos, Lucy, Matej, Kang, Safal and Liam) for their project 'Component Quest', which addressed chip shortages, rising costs and increasing levels of e-waste in the electronics industry. The students' challenge was to develop a smartphone app that uses AI to identify and value second hand electronic components, provide a current market value and link users to a marketplace where they can buy and sell them. Runners-up were teams Delta and Hotel.

Many congratulations to all our students!