Vacation Research Experience Scheme student topics

This interdisciplinary project investigates how Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) influences university students' educational outcomes. The project explores both the benefits and potential challenges of GenAI use in higher education, including its effects on student engagement, learning experiences, trust, motivation, behavioural intention, and perceived risks. It also examines how different forms of self-regulation influence students' educational experiences with GenAI.The project draws on theories from marketing, educational technology, psychology, information systems, and artificial intelligence. It forms part of an existing quantitative research …

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations

Research centre

Centre for Future Enterprise

This project explores how first-year engineering student teams function, using existing datasets collected from teamwork activities, surveys, and reflective tasks. The project sits at the intersection of engineering education, learning analytics, and teamwork research.The work is part of an ongoing research program focused on improving teamwork, belonging, and professional skill development in engineering students. It draws on real student data to identify patterns in team dynamics, communication, contribution, and overall functioning.

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics

This project explores the growing use of artificial intelligence in the legal profession to create “personas” of judges. These systems are trained on past decisions, legal reasoning, and perceived judicial attitudes to simulate how a judge might respond to a case. Lawyers can then use these simulated responses to test arguments and refine litigation strategy.The project examines how these tools work in practice, what assumptions they rely on, and how accurate or useful they truly are. It also considers broader …

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Law

This project examines the High Court of Australia’s decision in ASIC v Web3 Ventures Pty Ltd (Block Earner)—one of the first times the High Court has directly engaged with blockchain-based financial products. In June 2026, the Court unanimously held that Block Earner’s fixed-yield crypto product was a financial product requiring a licence, confirming that existing financial services laws apply to digital assets.This decision raises important questions about how the law understands blockchain technology. The Court emphasised that financial regulation is …

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Law

This project explores how blockchain is understood as a new kind of archive. Blockchain is often described as a system that creates trust through secure, unchangeable records. However, this claim is shaped by broader stories and expectations about technology. These stories form what we call the cultural imaginary—a mix of hope and fear that influences how people understand and regulate new technologies.On one hand, blockchain promises transparency and certainty. On the other, it raises concerns about misuse, control, and misinformation. …

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Law

This interdisciplinary project brings together researchers from Education, Creative Arts, Design, Architecture and Psychology to pioneer new approaches to understanding how young people use unconventional spaces like stairwells, corridors, toilets, and locker areas to manage their wellbeing in school spaces. The project is funded through the ARC Linkage Scheme, and led by Professor Jenna Gillett-Swan.V-Res students will work with the investigators on a specific component of the project to pilot processes that will be expanded and implemented in later stages. …

Faculty

Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice

School

School of Creative Arts

The advent of language-competent machine agents is already transforming many forms of work. Such agents can both be receivers of work, and the orchestrators of work, including work by human and machine agents. Furthermore, the work they do leaves digital traces that are a rich source of data for analysis and optimisation.This project is a systematic, hands-on, experimental investigation into self-improving orchestras of intelligent agents using explicit, explainable process models. It investigates agents which organise work in process models within …

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Information Systems

How does a machine learning system decide how many specialists it needs to make good predictions? Mixture-of-experts (MoE) models (Jacobs et al., 1991; Jordan and Jacobs, 1994) models tackle hard problems by splitting them among many simple sub-models, or experts, the same idea now powering some of the largest AI language models, and they are valued for their flexibility in modelling complex, real-world data. Despite their success, one deceptively simple question is still hard to answer well: how many experts …

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre

Centre for Data Science

Students will be directly affiliated with the Australian Research Council Discovery Project “Understanding and Combatting ‘Dark Political Communication’” (DP240103362). The project, led by QUT researchers, and including a team based at Deakin University in Melbourne, aims to better understand the rapidly-evolving, and increasingly sophisticated, tactics deployed by political actors to manipulate public attention and opinion.For this project, students will focus on coding and analysing data from industry interviews, and using that data to generate case studies for a forthcoming symposium …

Faculty

Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice

School

School of Communication

Research centre

Digital Media Research Centre

Under the National Credit Code, consumers who are unable to meet payments on their consumer credit contract have a statutory right to give a hardship notice to their credit provider. On receipt of the notice, the credit provider must give genuine consideration to the request and provide a response within the prescribed time (usually 21 days, but there are some exceptions). Types of assistance that can be offered might include temporary moratorium on repayments; reductions in payment amounts; extending the …

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Law

In 2025, New Zealand’s Financial Market (Conduct of Institutions) Amendment Act 2022 came into force. Among other things, the amendments imposed a new duty on licensed firms to implement a Fair Conduct Programme. This project will explore the early implementation of this obligation, through analysis of the public information on Fair Conduct Programmes (including the summary document required by the legislation) and other commentary. This project will contribute to an ARC Discovery Project: A new "Treating Customers Fairly" law for …

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

School

School of Law

The views of students are very important in an university context. However, there is limited opportunity to formally capture this views. Luckily (or not), there are lots of informal opinions shared amongst students on social media. This project will capture this information and use a sentiment analysis to elevate the positive and negative reaction to these subjects.

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Computer Science

Research centre

Centre for Data Science