100 UQ AI Innovations Changing the World
Artificial intelligence is changing how we live, learn, work and solve problems. But behind every AI innovation is something very human – curiosity. A question that hasn't been answered. A challenge that seems impossible. A belief that there might be a better way.
At The University of Queensland, those questions are being explored every day by researchers, students and partners from across disciplines. In laboratories, hospitals, classrooms, businesses and communities, they are applying artificial intelligence to challenges ranging from healthcare and education to environmental sustainability, scientific discovery and advanced technology.
This collection celebrates 100 examples of AI innovation from across the University. Together, they offer a glimpse into a much larger and rapidly growing ecosystem of research and discovery. They are stories of people, partnerships and ideas, and just the beginning of what is still to come.
- All
- Advancing AI
- Energy & Resources
- Environment & Agrifood
- Health & Biomedical
- Advanced Manufacturing
- Space & Defence
- Urban Design & Sustainable Infrastructure
- Para sport classification is essential for fair competition, but current methods rely on face-to-face assessments by highly trained experts. The process can be subjective, time-consuming and costly, creating barriers for athletes, particularly those in rural, remote and low- and middle-income countries.
- Australia’s solar generation capacity is on the cusp of rapid growth but underperforming panels cost the industry an estimated $400 million a year.
- A University of Queensland team has developed an evidence-based platform with embedded AI learning companions designed to question, scaffold and explain rather than simply answer questions – prioritising lasting understanding over immediate performance.
- RoadAtlas transforms road-network imagery and mobile-device inputs into city-scale infrastructure intelligence, while protecting resident privacy by design.
- Australian organisations in critical sectors such as finance, government and health are under growing risk of cyber attack.
- Grain growers can access a more accurate view of the season ahead, using a UQ-built system called CropVision to forecast wheat and sorghum yields up to four months before sowing.
- A University of Queensland spin-out, Cortisonic, is commercialising a new class of ultra-low-energy computing technology that uses high-frequency sound waves, known as hyper-sound, rather than conventional electronics to process information.
- Researchers at The University of Queensland are helping drive Australia's transition to digital manufacturing through the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for Future Digital Manufacturing.
- UQ researchers have developed AI-powered melanoma surveillance tools that help detect hard-to-spot skin cancers more consistently and accurately, improving early diagnosis and access to screening for Australians, particularly in regional and rural communities.
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- UQ researchers worked with MIT FutureTech to identify the most significant risks posed by artificial intelligence, helping governments, industry and researchers prioritise the AI risks requiring the most urgent attention.
- AI is accelerating the discovery of new medicines, agricultural chemicals and safer industrial compounds — but these systems can fail in silent, dangerous ways. A UQ team is pinpointing where AI predictions break down, and building safeguards to make them trustworthy.
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- Australia’s solar generation capacity is on the cusp of rapid growth but underperforming panels cost the industry an estimated $400 million a year.
- A University of Queensland spin-out, Cortisonic, is commercialising a new class of ultra-low-energy computing technology that uses high-frequency sound waves, known as hyper-sound, rather than conventional electronics to process information.
- Finding the minerals needed for the energy transition requires faster and more accurate ways to understand what lies beneath the Earth's surface and extract them sustainably.
- What if miners could see ore boundaries in real time? UQ researchers developed an AI-powered sensing system to make it possible.
- Researchers from UQ's School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering pioneered world-first autonomous mining equipment, including a fully autonomous excavator and autonomous bulldozers for production mining, helping improve safety, productivity and efficiency across the global mining industry.
- Grain growers can access a more accurate view of the season ahead, using a UQ-built system called CropVision to forecast wheat and sorghum yields up to four months before sowing.
- UQ researchers have developed an AI system that can identify birds in drone imagery up to 85 times faster than humans, helping conservationists monitor bird populations more efficiently across vast and hard-to-reach landscapes.
- Understanding how genes, molecules and environmental factors interact to influence biological traits remains one of the biggest challenges in biology. The knowledge needed to build these models exists, but it is scattered across thousands of scientific publications and databases.
- As the world seeks more sustainable and resilient food systems, there is growing interest in crops that can thrive in challenging conditions while delivering nutritional benefits.
- Across Australia, thousands of projects use motion-triggered cameras to monitor wildlife, generating millions of images and videos every year. But those data have long been fragmented across separate systems and formats, limiting its value for national-scale monitoring.
- Food waste is a significant problem in Australian hospitals – up to half of all waste a hospital produces can be food. This wastes not just food, but also the money and labour of these facilities – and food waste produces greenhouse gases.
- Governments around the world face increasingly difficult decisions about how land should be used. Farmland, forests, conservation areas and carbon storage often compete for the same space, creating tensions between economic development, climate action and biodiversity protection.
- UQ researchers have developed AI-powered melanoma surveillance tools that help detect hard-to-spot skin cancers more consistently and accurately, improving early diagnosis and access to screening for Australians, particularly in regional and rural communities.
- Researchers at The University of Queensland are using AI to reconstruct detailed foot pressure maps from only a small number of measurement points. The technology could support lower-cost foot health monitoring and help improve access to specialist assessment and orthotic care, particularly in rural and remote communities.
- UQ researchers - in partnership with the CSIRO and Siemens Healthineers - have developed an AI-enabled tool that automatically analyses knee MRI scans, helping researchers and clinicians better understand the disease and accelerating the search for MRI-based biomarkers that could improve diagnosis and treatment.
- A multidisciplinary UQ team, led by Dr Lauren Auode is developing and benchmarking deep learning and agentic AI approaches using multimodal datasets from around 460 patients with oesophageal cancer and melanoma.
- Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of healthcare's most powerful diagnostic and monitoring tools, but conventional scanners are expensive, non-portable and require siting in specialised facilities.
- UQ researchers have developed a framework that tests whether AI can provide trustworthy explanations during antibiotic discovery, helping scientists design novel antibiotics for new treatments for drug-resistant superbugs.
- UQ researchers have developed FeatureMAP, a machine-learning framework that helps scientists analyse how cells transition between states and identify genes associated with those changes, providing new insights into biological development, immune responses and disease.
- The Florence Project is developing AI-enabled communication technology that helps people living with dementia stay connected, confident and independent in everyday life through personalised support, communication assistance and human-centred design.
- Researchers at The University of Queensland are using artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) to transform the vast streams of data generated in paediatric intensive care units into real-time clinical insights.
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- Researchers at The University of Queensland are helping drive Australia's transition to digital manufacturing through the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for Future Digital Manufacturing.
- Australian organisations in critical sectors such as finance, government and health are under growing risk of cyber attack.
- Cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, frequent and costly. UQ researchers are developing AI systems that can automatically identify suspicious activity in computer networks, helping organisations detect cyber threats earlier and strengthen resilience across critical digital infrastructure.
- From ransomware attacks and large-scale data breaches to AI-generated scams, deepfakes and future risks posed by quantum computing, organisations and governments face a rapidly changing threat landscape.
- A UQ-led research team is developing AI-powered technology to identify fake media, track digital alterations and make verification accessible to non-experts.
- RoadAtlas transforms road-network imagery and mobile-device inputs into city-scale infrastructure intelligence, while protecting resident privacy by design.
- Researchers from the School of Civil Engineering are addressing the reason AI road inspection has yet to work reliably on unsealed roads.
- A UQ-India team has developed an AI-enabled digital twin of underground infrastructure – a detailed geometric virtual replica of a real tunnel that engineers could utilise to inspect, evaluate and track deformation and damage over time by a non-intrusive approach.
- Tunnels develop several different kinds of defect as they age: hairline cracks, water leakage, and areas of flaking or segment damage. Left unchecked, these defects can compromise a tunnel’s structural safety.