This year’s projects reflected a broad and forward-looking range of themes. Many teams explored the use of artificial intelligence in education, healthcare, student support, assessment, and media processing. Others focused on immersive technologies, including virtual reality and augmented reality applications designed to enhance learning, patient education, sports experiences, and mission planning. Several projects also addressed emerging topics such as digital twins, multi-agent simulation, federated learning, environmental monitoring, and intelligent analytics, demonstrating students’ engagement with complex and socially relevant problems.
The variety of work on display showed how software engineering can be applied across diverse contexts, from smart campus services and classroom engagement to financial analysis, fitness tracking, logistics simulation, and food safety. Many of the projects were driven by practical needs and user-centered design, reflecting the students’ efforts to develop systems with meaningful real-world value. The Open Day served not only as a showcase of technical achievement, but also as a reflection of the students’ growing understanding of how technology can be used to support society in different ways.
GRP is a year-long module that gives students the opportunity to experience the realities of team-based software development within the supportive environment of the Computer Science curriculum. Throughout the year, students are challenged to take projects from initial concept to working systems, while developing skills in planning, communication, implementation, testing, and project management. More than many other modules, GRP requires students to navigate the complexities of collaboration, shared responsibility, and problem-solving in realistic settings.
Liu Baicen - Nuobuddy:
I led a team in developing an AI-powered chatbot that integrates campus information. This project helps students on campus understand university policies and access support guidance. As the Team Leader, I deeply realized that the biggest challenge was not technology, but how to help teammates at different skill levels grow together. This experience taught me that a good architecture is not just about clean code, but also about empowering everyone to contribute. Sharing knowledge is far more valuable than coding alone.
Xiao Yao - Ufinder:
Our school stays at the forefront of the times, and our project focuses on one of the hottest LLM applications today—an AI Agent that assists students with university selection based on their profiles. This placed higher demands on our learning capabilities. Fortunately, the school assigned a mentor to each group, and the guidance from our mentor was immensely helpful in mastering this cutting-edge technology. Through a student-led, teacher-guided approach, we not only efficiently grasped the technology but also transformed it into a mature application.
Song Jilin - Personal AI Wardrobe Assistant:
In this project, we used LangChain as the main Agent framework and integrated the ComfyUI workflow to create an AI virtual wardrobe. This project experience was an enriching hands-on journey for us. It was the first time I applied the technologies I had systematically learned to a real project. Throughout the collaboration, we supported each other and overcame numerous challenges. In the end, we gained not only satisfying results but also a wonderful memory filled with happiness and team cohesion.
Prof Dave Towey, convenor for the GRP module, said: “Every year, the GRP Open Day is one of the highlights for us: Not just for the GRP students, but the entire School. It is a great pleasure for me, as the convenor and a team advisor/supervisor, to see the transformation in the students: From the nervous, inexperienced individuals in September, to the confident teams now proudly showing off their final projects and products. I am very proud of not just what the teams are showing us during the Open Day, but also of the growth and evolution that they have all gone through. It is a demanding experience, but a most worthwhile one, too!”
As one of the most demanding yet rewarding parts of the programme, GRP encourages students to step beyond their individual comfort zones and grow into confident and capable team members. By the time they reach Open Day, they have not only developed substantial software projects, but also gained first-hand experience of the challenges and rewards of working as part of an engineering team.
The success of this year’s Open Day was made possible by the hard work and dedication of the student teams throughout the academic year, as well as the support of colleagues who contributed to the organisation of the event. Once again, the event provided a strong demonstration of the creativity, resilience, and professional growth that GRP helps to foster, and of the important role the module plays in preparing students for future careers in software engineering and related fields.