Facts & figures
Project fast facts
- 85+ Organisations that offer real-world projects for students
- 8000+ Students have undertaken an industry project
- 240+ Completed projects
- 7 different countries where we offer projects
Collaborate on real-world projects
Our students provide fresh thinking for complex business problems
We partner our students with leading corporate, community and government organisations to create innovative solutions to complex issues.
Our students bring fresh insights to your organisation and gain invaluable practical experience.
Partnering on a student project gives you the opportunity to collaborate and connect with a group of talented students and tackle an issue that is relevant to your organisation. What makes these projects unique is that they are interdisciplinary. They are available to all senior undergraduate students from all disciplines. The variation of disciplines and schools of thought within the student projects leads to creative and new ways to tackle your complex problems.
We have partnered groups of interdisciplinary students with more than 85 leading organisations in Australia and internationally, including China, Hong Kong, Italy, India, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Our partner organisations include Adobe, EY, Gilbert and Tobin, Jacobs Engineering, PTW Architects, Youth Justice NSW, Westpac and many more.
Students have worked on a range of complex problems exploring topics such as the war on waste, future possibilities for the global space industry, the impact of artificial intelligence and creating a renewable energy future.
These projects provide an exceptional platform to bring an industry lens to help support an enriching learning experience by providing the opportunity for students to work on real world industry problems. Working in cross-disciplinary teams students are able to gain insight into the various drivers and multiple stakeholder perspectives required in developing a set of robust, viable and compelling recommendations.
EY
Access to the best talent
These projects provide a great opportunity to engage with motivated senior undergraduate students from a diverse range of disciplines. They provide exposure and insights into your organisation and the range of careers that might be available to these students.
Innovative problem solving
Our students provide our partners with genuinely creative, innovative and effective insights to a range of different issues.
No cost
There is no cost to your organisation. Your investment is centred on time – estimated commitment of 10-15 hours during the program.
As a project partner, you will play a vital role in giving our students a head start as they navigate their way into the future workforce.
Firstly, partners will provide a brief to the students about an authentic business or industry problem faced by their organisation. The students will gather research; conduct detailed analysis and present recommended solutions to you as a group at the end of the project.
You will have the opportunity to engage with students and provide feedback on their progress throughout the project before they present their fresh insights and final solutions.
You will have anywhere from 45 to 60 students in your project, from a variety of disciplines across Science, Engineering, Law, Business, Arts, Architecture, Health and Science. Students will then work in smaller groups of five to come up with solutions and recommendations to your business or industry problem.
Projects are run in either a semester-long format – for 13 weeks – or an intensive mode during February and July over four weeks.
Please contact us if you're interested in collaborating with students on authentic projects for your organisation.
All the students worked together with such integrity and presented seamlessly. I’m absolutely confident that each one of these students will use what they have learnt in this project when they enter the world of work.
HSBC
Our Partnerships
Our students are collaborating with a number of industry, community and government organisations on complex real-world problems. Solutions to complex problems such as these cannot be solved in silos. Therefore, we bring together interdisciplinary groups of students to come up with genuine ‘out of the box’ solutions. Throughout the project student groups have the opportunity to learn from and engage with experts from your organisation before presenting their final recommendations. The solutions offered by our students have reinforced the value of these industry partnerships and the importance of involving industry in creating real-world educational experiences for students. Below are examples of some of the projects our students have worked on.
In June 2023, 18 University of Sydney students travelled to Singapore to collaborate with Singapore Airlines’ KrisShop on a project all around excelling in the Australian’ Market. KrisShop was interested in understanding the Australian retail market and how they could better position themselves to Australian consumers. Over a three-week period, students learnt as much as they could about Singapore Airlines' KrisShop. In collaboration with KrisShop CEO students researched, analysed, and presented recommendations on how KrisShop could excel in the Australian market. They came up with ideas around new product offerings, new ways to target and market to audiences and improvements to the customer experience. This project was facilitated by KrisLab, Singapore Airlines’ Digital Innovation Lab.
During this semester long project students virtually collaborated with stakeholders based in India from across the TATA Autocomp company. Students were able to pitch creative ideas for how TATA could adopt new technology and products to stay ahead of the curve in the future of automotive and mobility. This project is just one of many that has been completed with TATA group companies. Other companies we have collaborated with include TATA Power and TATA Steel.
Over the past 5 years, Australia’s oldest bank has been partnering with Australia’s oldest university on the Industry and Community Project Units. With this long-standing partnership Westpac poses the problem to students each semester on how can they use digital technologies to improve user experiences. In this project students explore solutions that take advantage of ways in which digital technologies can be used to deliver superior personalised services for customers or staff, to help put customers in control of their finances and to better understand and anticipate customer or staff needs. At the end of the project students have the chance to pitch an innovative idea to senior Westpac staff.
The cohort of young people in contact with the youth justice system in NSW is multiculturally diverse, with some groups disproportionally overrepresented. The overrepresentation of Aboriginal young people in the youth justice system and the poorer outcomes achieved from public services for Aboriginal people more broadly is well documented. However, little is known about the efficacy and experiences that young people from other cultural backgrounds have when involved in mandated services. Youth Justice NSW partnered with students on an Industry and Community Project Unit to seek further understanding about the unique culture background of youth from Pacific Islander, Arab, New Zealand and African origins. At the end of the project students provided actionable insights on the experiences and possible interventions for young people from diverse backgrounds across Youth NSW services. Exploring services that would enhance the outcomes for young people of Pacific Communities (including Māori) backgrounds, young people from African countries (and refugee or refugee-like) and young people from Arabic-speaking backgrounds.