IVE Virtual Intern Program (VIP)

This project explores how Virtual Reality could be used to help train dementia carers, especially in improving staff empathy and retention/satisfaction. The intern will conduct scenario design. They will also use Maya, ShapesXR, or Unity to produce some concept interactive VR scenarios as demons. They will participate in remote meetings to get feedback.

This project is a continuation of the initial research previously undertaken by two interns for the first round of VIP program. The first project focused on a literature review and successful global and Australian experiences related to the adoption of AI in green space development. In continue, this project will concentrate on the potential application of AI for green space planning and development in the Adelaide Metropolitan Area. It will explore how AI can be effectively integrated into planning processes, identify barriers to its adoption, and propose recommendations to support more sustainable, inclusive, and adaptive green space planning across Adelaide's diverse urban landscapes.

Project Duration: 3 months

Step into the future of residential architectural innovation! This hands-on project offers a unique opportunity to help develop an immersive VR tool that allows users to explore building designs in real time and immediately see how their choices impact critical performance factors like thermal comfort, daylighting, and acoustics. Interns will work in a dynamic, interdisciplinary environment at the cutting edge of sustainable retrofitting and digital design. You will be part of a team shaping a user-friendly design framework that empowers architects and clients to make better-informed decisions through interactive simulation. Participants will be split into two groups: Group 1: Design & Performance Focus: Dive into the aesthetics, practicality, and environmental impacts of retrofitting strategies. Ideal for students with a background in architecture, environmental design, or building performance. Group 2: VR Development & Prototyping: Build the immersive VR interface using tools like Unity, Unreal Engine, or ShapesXR, and integrate simulation platforms such as Rhino + Grasshopper + Honeybee or SketchUp + Sefaira. Ideal for those with skills in VR development, parametric design, or interactive systems. You will collaborate with architects, building scientists, and UI/UX designers to ensure the tool is not only technically sound but intuitive and impactful for real-world use.

Project Duration: 6 months

Join a dynamic, international team in shaping the future of housing through OASIS, a flagship virtual internship project focused on advancing Modern Methods of Construction (MMC). As housing affordability and climate resilience become critical challenges, MMC offers transformative potential by integrating intelligent manufacturing, prefabrication, and modular systems to deliver high-quality, cost-effective, and energy-efficient homes faster and smarter.
This six-month research-based project invites students to collaboratively produce a professionally designed industry-facing booklet that explores how MMC can address Australia's housing crisis. You will investigate cutting-edge offsite construction systems, analyse and local best practices, and propose innovative solutions for modular component and joint design that respond to real-world constraints like transportability, compliance, and on-site assembly.
Participants will explore how BIM, parametric design, and digital fabrication intersect with sustainability, automation, and industrial design. Regular feedback from industry experts, academics, and peers will support a rich learning environment where your contributions directly feed into applied knowledge and sector innovation.
As an Intern student, you will gain (1) hands-on research experience with MMC case studies, (2) development of a professionally published booklet and/or possible co-authorship of academic or industry publications, (3) exposure to design-to-delivery workflows across architecture, construction, and policy, (4) skills in technical writing, team collaboration, and public presentation, through biweekly briefings, and (5) mentorship from leading academics and engagement with real industry stakeholders.

Project Duration: 6 months

VR offers opportunities for sharing the experience of Country for Indigenous communities who wish to take control of the representation of their lands and disseminate this representation to their own members and to the wider world. Under this VIP the student, in collaboration with community members, would identify community priorities, identify a suitable highly portable laser scanning device and design a pathway to upload and store VR footage from the field and make it discoverable on a map layer on an open-access GIS platform like TLCMap [tlcmap.org]. The focus would be on design and scoping rather than extensive data capture in the field.

Project Duration: 6 months

This project explores how Extended Reality (XR) and tangible interfaces can assist with emotion regulation and support.
The intern will conduct background research on previous studies and projects that integrate XR technologies and tangible interfaces (e.g., haptic feedback, physical interactive objects) for emotional wellbeing. They will organise and manage the literature review process, employing qualitative data analysis methods to identify key themes and synthesise findings. Additionally, the intern will engage in idea generation and sketching to visualise potential design concepts for future developments.

Project Duration: 6 months

Building climate-resilient cities is not just about individual systems, but also about holistic urban planning that accounts for future extreme events, changing climates, and evolving urban dynamics. This project examines how urban digital twins can support climate-adaptive planning and policy-making at the city scale. Traditionally, urban planners use maps and static models to make decisions. In contrast, a digital twin offers an interactive, data-rich 4D model of the city, enabling planners to test scenarios and see potential outcomes on the fly. By incorporating diverse datasets; from land use and demographics to climate projections and infrastructure networks - a city-scale digital twin becomes a powerful "what-if" tool for resilience planning. For example, planners could simulate how different development strategies affect heat distribution, flood risk, or energy use, and then optimize designs accordingly.

Leading cities are already moving in this direction: Singapore, Amsterdam, and others have leveraged digital twins to inform cooling strategies and flood defences as part of their urban development plans. However, the adoption of UDTs in urban planning is still nascent, and there is a need for clearer methodologies and frameworks to guide their effective use. Recent research underscores the absence of a "clear, structured process" for implementing and scaling UDT solutions, highlighting the need for common guidelines and KPIs to realize their full potential in urban planning practices. This project aims to contribute to filling that gap by conceptualising how UDTs can be systematically integrated into the planning process to enhance climate resilience.

The intern will conduct a literature review on the intersection of digital twin technology and urban planning for climate adaptation. Key topics include: digital twin-driven decision support for land-use planning under climate scenarios, stakeholder engagement through virtual city platforms (e.g. using 3D visualization to communicate risks and plans to the public), and governance or policy considerations for implementing digital twins (data governance, inter-agency collaboration). The review will also look into smart city case studies, planning journals, and reports from organizations focusing on urban tech governance. Using insights from the literature, the intern will develop a conceptual roadmap or framework for incorporating UDTs into urban climate adaptation planning. This framework might outline stages such as: data integration (combining environmental data, urban models, socio-economic data into the twin), scenario simulation (e.g. assessing impacts of a new park on citywide heat or the effect of a seawall on flood plains), evaluation metrics (resilience indicators like reduced flood extent or cooler microclimate zones), and feedback loops for policy (using simulation results to inform zoning laws, building codes, or emergency plans). The framework will emphasize a clear scope (3-6 month virtual project scale) focusing on conceptual development over technical implementation but with an eye on how it could be expanded into a real-world pilot or scholarly research.

Ideally, the intern could illustrate part of the concept using basic Python or available urban data tools: for instance, by creating a simple interactive map or model that demonstrates how combining various data layers (heat, flood, population vulnerability) can help prioritize interventions. This would serve as an example of the planning support that a more sophisticated digital twin could offer.

Project Duration: 6 months

This project aims to identify the key challenges and opportunities in using artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as predictive modelling, spatial analysis, and machine learning, for green space planning and management, with a specific focus on the Adelaide Metropolitan Area. As cities face increasing pressure from urbanisation, population growth, and climate change, the strategic planning and maintenance of urban green spaces have become essential for enhancing liveability, ecological resilience, and public wellbeing. AI technologies offer transformative potential by enabling data-driven decision-making, improving spatial equity, and predicting future needs based on demographic and environmental trends. These tools can analyse vast and complex datasets, from satellite imagery to sensor-based environmental monitoring, to assess the condition, accessibility, and distribution of green spaces. However, the application of AI in this context also presents several challenges, including data quality and availability, limited technical capacity within local councils, ethical concerns around privacy, and the risk of reinforcing spatial inequalities through biased algorithms. This project will explore how AI can be effectively integrated into planning processes, identify barriers to its adoption, and propose recommendations to support more sustainable, inclusive, and adaptive green space planning across Adelaide's diverse urban landscapes.

Project Duration: 3 months

Although the concept of creating a panorama of cityscapes and landscapes dates back several hundred years (sometimes traditionally referred to as a cyclorama with an immersive painted representation of a landscape or city scape scene on a circular backdrop surrounding a central viewing point), this project explores a modern interpretation of this approach using high resolution digital visualisation technology. Many cities have aspired to build tall towers or buildings with a public observation deck to provide an elevated panoramic perspective across the cityscape and with distant views to the horizon. However, such structures can be extremely costly and require a tower of massive scale and height to fulfil this function. This project explores the feasibility of creating a real-time virtual digital 360 degree panorama providing an "eagle's eye view of a cityscape that would replicate the view from the top of a tower that is totally immersive and of sufficient realism to be equivalent to the view from an equivalent observation deck. The first part of this project would be a desktop research study of examining international exemplars of public panorama exhibitions whilst the second part of this study would involve designing a project proposal for a what would be needed to develop a real-time public panorama located in Adelaide's Centre Business District that provides an immersive viewing experience of a virtual observation deck several hundred metres about the city's streets.

Project Duration: 6 months with possibility of extending

This project explores how immersive virtual reality (VR) can be used to support aviation theory education, with a focus on aerodynamics. While aviation theory is generally delivered through lectures and text-based materials, these methods can make it challenging for students to visualise abstract aerodynamic concepts.

Project Duration: 6 months

This project contributes to a PhD study investigating intergenerational engagement and empathy-building through immersive virtual environments (IVEs). The intern will support the development of a Mixed Reality (MR) prototype in Unity for Meta Quest 3. The MR experience will need to simulate specific age-related conditions such as macular degeneration and hearing loss, from the perspective of an older person.

The aim is to foster empathy and understanding in younger users (Males 15-18) by providing embodied experiences of sensory decline and will be used as a tool as part of a month study within school. The intern will assist with background research, but mostly with interaction design, and technical implementation. Thus, contributing to co-design activities involving both younger and older participants. This project may also support outputs for academic publication, user study evaluation and program development within schools.

Project Duration: 3 months

Environmental management of residential areas has significant impact on urban sustainability and reliance cities. This research project aims to develop an integrated framework that links residential solar photovoltaic (PV) retrofit strategies with urban green space planning, using both visual and environmental data. With growing interest in sustainable and low-carbon urban environments, there is an urgent need to understand how vegetation, such as street trees, hedges, and green infrastructure, affects the feasibility and efficiency of solar retrofits in dense urban areas. This study seeks to address that need by examining how green elements influence solar access, shading patterns, and residents' visual and spatial experiences.

Project Duration: 6 months

A Large Language Model (LLM)-based AI agent can be trained with human knowledge to independently perform tasks that require relevant expertise. However, there is limited understanding of how such AI experts can benefit Mixed Reality (MR) collaborations, particularly when collaborators are separated by time and location. In this project, we aim to embed LLM-based AI agents into an asynchronous MR collaboration system to investigate how this approach can support remote collaborators in completing tasks together across time and space.

Project Duration: 3 months

Develop interactive educational elements for a virtual food science laboratory tour that enables students to practice lab procedures, safety protocols, and equipment familiarisation before attending in-person practicals. The goal is to create engaging simulations that build student confidence and reduce costly errors during actual lab sessions across four specialised spaces (commercial kitchen, sensory labs, and food innovation laboratory).

Project Duration: 6 months

To address the challenge of understanding and visualising 3D structures from 2D drawings, the integration of immersive learning technologies has become a key focus in teaching and learning construction management in online learning environments. Among various building elements, roof framing and covering involve complex arrangements and are thereby more challenging for new students to understand. In collaboration with relevant experts, two separate VR models have been developed for framing and covering. The roof framing model has been tested by incorporating it into Online construction management courses and with various other student cohorts to check its usability. The project team identified a few improvements to be done for the existing models, and found merging two models to provide a complete experience of roof framing and covering in the same model as beneficial.

Project Duration: 3 months