Ideaz

The "ThesisLink" Platform

ThesisLink is a collaborative platform designed to help students, particularly those in graduate programs, find and connect with researchers and professionals who are interested in collaborating on their thesis or dissertation projects. This platform would address a significant gap in the current academic landscape.

The Problem and Gap in the Market

The biggest problem facing graduate students is the difficulty of securing relevant, real-world data and expert feedback for their theses. Often, they rely solely on their academic advisor or struggle to find companies or organizations willing to share data or provide insights for a student project. The current solutions are largely manual and inefficient: cold-emailing professionals, attending conferences in hopes of networking, or relying on the limited connections of their university department. There is no centralized, searchable database or platform that connects students with potential collaborators based on mutual research interests.

The market currently lacks a solution that bridges the gap between academic research and industry/professional needs. While platforms like LinkedIn exist, they are not tailored for this specific purpose.

Who Benefits?

• Students: They gain access to real-world data, expert insights, and a network of professionals. This improves the quality of their research and can even lead to employment opportunities.

• Professionals/Companies: They can use the platform to identify potential research partnerships, discover new talent, and gain valuable, low-cost research from students on topics relevant to their business or industry.

• The Academic Community: The platform would foster greater collaboration between academia and the professional world, making academic research more impactful and relevant.

Why This Problem Matters

This problem matters to me because I've seen firsthand how brilliant research ideas can get stuck due to a lack of access to real-world data. I know students who have had to significantly scale back their projects or change their thesis topics altogether because they couldn't find the right data or collaborators. The process of writing a thesis can be isolating and frustrating, and I believe a platform like ThesisLink could make it a much more collaborative and rewarding experience.

Problem Statement

In many lectures students struggle between listening to the professor and writing notes. If they focus on writing, they miss the explanation. If they just listen, they forget the details later. Some record the lectures, but those recordings are one to two hours long and impractical to review before exams. This often results in incomplete notes and unnecessary stress.

Proposed Solution

A Lecture-to-Notes Converter application that:

• Converts recorded lectures into clear and structured notes.

• Highlights important definitions, formulas, and examples.

• Provides short summaries instead of lengthy transcripts.

• Generates flashcards and MCQs from the lecture for revision.

Key Features

• Automatic transcription of lecture audio or video.

• Smart summarization to produce concise, easy-to-read notes.

• Highlighting of keywords, formulas, and definitions.

• Quick revision tools such as flashcards and MCQs.

• Easy sharing of notes with classmates for collaboration.

Benefits for Students

• Removes the pressure of writing while listening.

• Saves time by avoiding long replays of recordings.

• Makes exam preparation efficient with crisp revision points.

• Helps students who miss classes catch up quickly.

• Creates a digital repository of organized notes across semesters.

Conclusion

The Lecture-to-Notes Converter directly addresses a major academic challenge faced by students. By combining transcription, summarization, and revision tools in one platform, it can transform the way students prepare for exams, reduce stress, and improve overall learning efficiency.

Dynamic Crowding Maps for Public Transport

Public transportation is meant to save time, money, and reduce urban congestion, yet one persistent problem remains: overcrowding. Many commuters waste valuable minutes watching multiple packed buses or trains pass by, while others squeeze into uncomfortably full vehicles simply because they lack information about better options nearby.

Existing tools like Google Maps and transit apps provide accurate arrival times, but they rarely display real-time crowd density. Riders are left guessing whether the next bus will have space. This gap highlights the need for smarter, commuter-focused solutions.

The proposed idea is a crowdsourced crowd-level tracker that allows riders to anonymously report occupancy levels with just one tap on their smartphones. To reduce reliance on manual input, the system could also use sensors already present in devices: accelerometers (detecting passenger movement patterns) and Bluetooth signal strength (estimating the number of devices in a confined space). The aggregated data would then generate live “heat maps” of transit lines, showing commuters which upcoming options are less crowded.

The benefits are threefold:

Commuters save time and travel more comfortably.

Transit authorities gain valuable insights for service optimization.

Cities reduce congestion and improve overall transit satisfaction.

This problem matters because inefficiency in public transport discourages its use, pushing people back to private vehicles and worsening traffic and pollution. By making commuting smarter and more predictable, dynamic crowding maps can transform the daily experience of millions while supporting more sustainable urban mobility.