2019 QUT STEM Camp Research Projects

Check out this year’s STEM camp research projects:

Breaking Bones

STEM Disciplines: Skeletal Biology, Biomechanics, Biochemistry

Project Leader: Associate Professor Laura Gregory, Faculty of Health 

The 2020 Olympic Games are not far away with hundreds of Australian elite athletes placing high demands on their bodies to reach peak performance. Our skeleton protects, supports and allows body movement; it is essential that bones are strong enough to withstand the extreme stress levels experienced by our athletes to avoid fracture. Our bones are incredibly sensitive to their environment, adapting to mechanical, hormonal and dietary cues every minute and every second of the day! In this project students will learn the structural and chemical components of bone tissue that determine mechanical strength using a Universal Testing System that applies a mechanical load to bones until they reach their failure point and break. Students will treat bones with a range of relevant dietary factors and using a 3-point bending test be able to make evidence-based dietary recommendations to the Australian Institute of Sport to increase bone strength in our athletes.

Helping Hearts Live Healthier

STEM Disciplines: Exercise Science, Clinical Exercise Physiology, Biomechanics

Project Leader: Robert Mullins, Faculty of Health

One in five Australian adults (22%) in 2015 suffered from cardiovascular disease which resulted in 45,000 deaths and 1.1 million hospitalisations. Almost 1 in 3 deaths in Australia each year are caused by coronary heart disease, stroke and hypertensive disease. There is no one identifiable cause for this chronic disease but identifying the major risk factors and knowing those that are treatable is critical to saving millions of lives. In this project, students will look at risk factors for cardiovascular disease of real patients through physiological and movement assessments. Students will learn how to take blood pressure, pulse rate, oxygen saturation, blood glucose levels, body composition (body fat, muscle and water) and assess movement capacity with the assistance of imaging technology.  Working within the real-world QUT Health Clinics, students will gain access to biomechanics and exercise physiology equipment to understand the effects of exercise and movement on the body’s system. The results will help inform people how to live healthier lives, overcome limitations to movement and reduce their risk of heart disease. 

Engineering Design: The Pressure Test

STEM Disciplines: Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, Structural Engineering, Physics, Creative and Industrial Design, Entrepreneurship

Project Leader: Professor Les Dawes, Science and Engineering Faculty and Dr Natalie Wright, Creative Industries Faculty

Every day we are surrounded by clever and creative products, from chairs made of shopping trolleys to spa hammocks. QUT has a new space for high school students experiencing life at university and needs your help to provide a comfortable and creative space. We need you to harness your imagination and combine it with your engineering skills to create one of a kind designs! Throughout the week you will learn about the engineering and creative design methods, understand the engineering behind basic structures, design and build your solution, utilise statistics to optimise your creation, test your designs and pitch your concept. Get ready to unleash your creativity and engineering ingenuity!

eSports Video Game Development

STEM Disciplines: Games and Interactive Environments, Computer Human Interaction, Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering

Project Leader: Dr David Conroy, Science and Engineering Faculty

eSports have become a major player in the global entertainment industry, worth over $1 Billion, combining teamwork, competition and strategy. This project will challenge students to develop a unique gaming solution to explore a distant exoplanet and compete against their friends. Working in teams they will host their own round-robin eSports competition for their game, with mentoring and advice from Brisbane eSport experts. Students will learn the fundamentals of video game design and develop their solution using Unity, an industry leading game development engine used for computers, consoles and mobile devices.

Waste Free World from Monstrous Hybrids

STEM Disciplines: Chemistry, Process Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Sustainability Biotechnology, Creative and Industrial Design, Entrepreneurship

Project Leaders: Professor Rowena Barrett, QUT Entrepreneurship; Professor Robert Speight, Science and Engineering Faculty and Institute for Future Environments, and Associate Professor Alice Payne, Creative Industries Faculty and Institute for Future Environments. 

How many textile items can you see around you right now? Your clothes, your backpack, the carpet? Have you ever thought about what happens after you finish using them? Australians dispose of 6000 kilograms of textile waste every 10 minutes. This is particularly concerning when the textiles in question are monstrous hybrids – half technical, half biological and all wasteful. Monstrous hybrids cannot be recycled with technical waste or biological waste and as such, most of the millions of kilograms generated ends up in landfill. As of September 2018, the Queensland Government has dedicated $100 million to funding waste management projects and ideas. After learning about the science and engineering behind monstrous hybrids, you will take to the labs to experiment splitting these hybrids into their various materials. You will then use business, creative industry, and engineering skills to develop a way to reuse this waste to address consumer needs before pitching your idea in a bid to earn government funding!  

I Know What You Streamed Next Summer

STEM Disciplines: Mathematics: Data Science, Technology: Computer Science, Information Science

Project Leader: Dr Gentry White, Science and Engineering Faculty

As we collect more and more data about the world around us, many important questions are raised. How should we gather and store it? Who should benefit? What ethical concerns should we have?  What should we do with it? Data science is the technical art of using amazing algorithms, incredible intuition, deep data digging and some vigorous visualisation to make predictions that inform decisions in business, advertising, science, medicine and anything in between. If you have ever wondered how human behaviour can be predicted for targeted advertising, including recommendations on streaming services, data science is the explanation. This project will begin with understanding of how predictions are made from mathematical concepts like Bayesian probability and graph theory, before students make simple predictions to get a feel for the intuition aspect. From there, students will undertake an exciting exploration of the methods we use to data science today, from boosted decision trees to neural networks, before considering data issues including collection, data cleaning and investigating bias and ethical decisions. Students will also have hands-on experience with the Python programming language for creating, manipulating and using data from a variety of areas. Finally, this new data science knowledge will be applied to make accurate predictions of what an online streaming tool might suggest a user will like.

Pharmacy Zombie Busters  

STEM Disciplines: Health Science, Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Science, Pharmacology

Project Leaders: Dr Yasmin Antwertinger and Dr Esther Lau, Faculty of Health 

The World Health Organisation has issued an announcement declaring the Brisbane outbreak of the Z0-M8-1E virus to have reached epidemic levels, leaving disaster in its path. You and your team of pharmacists have been asked to help prevent this outbreak from spreading. A newly discovered drug that is thought to be effective against the virus has been discovered. Using your expert pharmaceutical knowledge you are tasked with creating a formulation to administer this new drug, which has never been used in humans. You have also been asked to produce a zombie repellent to protect first responders and healthcare workers looking after people who have been infected. You are Brisbane’s last hope, will you answer the call?

Pepper Robot: The Next Generation Companion

STEM Disciplines: Mechatronics, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Technology, Entrepreneurship

Project Leader: Marley Brown and Mackenzie Jackson from Conpago, a QUT Bluebox Start-up

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to have a conversation with a robot which looks like a person? Pepper is the first humanoid robot able to recognise human faces, understand human emotions and is the next generation of companion. In this project, students will create innovative applications for Pepper targeting the aged care market and will pitch their unique solution to potential customers and investors. Students will explore innovative ways of adopting Pepper as an assistant to inform, entertain and guide customers and enhance customers’ experience through engaging conversations. Learn about Choregraphe software and QiChat programming to develop Pepper applications to tackle the real-world challenges.

Mars 2020 Rover Mission

STEM Disciplines: Geobiology, Physics, Astrophysics, Mathematics, Aerospace

Project Leader: Dr David Flannery, Science and Engineering Faculty

Is there life on Mars? A group of highly ingenious young scientists has been selected and tasked with modelling the Mars 2020 mission, from launch in July 2020 through to collecting samples to test for signs of life using the Rover’s robotic arm. When the Mars 2020 Rover lands on the red planet and begins its exploration for signs of past life, QUT's Dr David Flannery will be part of the team operating one of its instruments remotely back here on Earth. In this project students will apply a transdisciplinary approach combining physics, chemistry, rocket science and aerospace, robotics and Python programming, geology and materials science to embark on interplanetary travel and to test for macroscopic biosignatures of past life.

Wearable Technology for Sun Safety: Designing for the Aussie Sun

STEM Disciplines: Industrial Design, Technology, Software Engineering, Entrepreneurship, Applied Statistics and Data Analysis

Project Leader: Dr Rafael Gomez, Creative Industries Faculty

Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world with Cancer Council Australia stating that sun exposure causes around 95% of melanomas in Australia. This design, technology and science project will apply creative thinking to design future wearable technology concepts. After unpacking the balance between harms and benefits of sun exposure you will learn how to program sensors such as the UV readers. These sensors give real-time data on UV exposure. You will innovate, develop and test wearable prototypes that sense, track, monitor and read UV levels so as to better understand sun safety in the Australian climate.

Robot Arm Vision

STEM Disciplines: Industrial Design, Technology, Software Engineering, Entrepreneurship, Applied Statistics and Data Analysis

Project Leader: Dr Chris Lehnert, Science and Engineering Faculty and Institute for Future Environments

Automated robotic arms have become integral in many industries, helping with tasks from manufacturing to medical procedures. Using a robotic arm allows increased precision, repeatability and efficiency, and allows the abstraction of dangerous tasks away from humans. But how do they actually work? Well there are a lot of sensors which can be used to govern the movement of a robot arm, but in this project we will explore the use of vision; one of the most powerful tools for humans and robots alike. Employing state of the art robotic vision packages, students will learn to identify key attributes of an image, and move the robot arm to locations accordingly. Ultimately, students will learn some of the foundational principles used in real world robots like QUT’s autonomous underwater vehicle ‘RangerBot’, capsicum picker ‘Harvey’ and surgery robot ‘SnakeBot’.

What would the world look like if everything was computable?

STEM Disciplines: Mathematics, Data Science, Technology, Computer Science, Information Science

Project Leader: Associate Professor Dan Nicolau, Science and Engineering Faculty

Since the invention of Turing machines in 1936, there have been remarkable leaps in technology. Computers have become such a significant aspect of our daily lives, but as incredible as the modern computer is, there are still problems which are incomputable or take far too long to be worth computing. This is both bad (e.g. we can’t design new drugs or understand how the economy works) and good (these “hard” functions allow secure encryption and permit privacy on the internet). In this project we will use a combination of mathematics and philosophical arguments to distinguish between the types of problems that computers can solve quickly, and those which are (thought to be) impossible or intractable to compute. We will investigate current encryption measures and the threat that quantum computers pose to maintaining privacy over the internet. And, we will see that computational irreversibility, rather than being simply a mathematical concept, is a fundamental aspect of day-to-day life, as we are periodically reminded that some things are very easy to do and very difficult to undo: it’s easy to hurt and hard to heal, it’s easy to break trust and hard to rebuild it.