Coaching Students and Student Teams

Public Events: UTS Shape Shifters event 2015; Research Showcases since 2010; Presentations for the public promoting STEM.

International Conference Presentations: Students develop and practice presentations for conferences in the Magic Lab. 

Industry Presentations: Students develop and practice presentations for conferences in the Magic Lab.

Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Framing problems, ideation, prototyping, experimentation and testing.

Competitions: Fellowships, Pitching, Innovation Challenges, Hackathons, Robot Competitions - see below.

Student Awards, Prizes and Accomplishments

Valeo 100,000€ Innovation Challenge

The Valeo Innovation Challenge is an amazing opportunity to imagine and conceive the car of the future.

Play an active role in automative innovation. Design the product or system that will create smarter and more intuitive cars by 2030 and develop daring solutions that will revolutionise the future!

  • May-Anne led and coached  a UTS team to the finals of the 2015 Valeo 100,000 Euro Innovation Challenge. The UTS Team were one of seven finalists (out of 1000) and only Australian University team. The team was invited to the Paris Motor Show to pitch their innovation and demonstrate their mock-up to a panel lead by the CEO of Valeo.

International Robot Competitions

Social Robotics: Team leader of the new UTS Social Robotics Team using Pepper Robots.

Robot Soccer: Mary-Anne established several highly successful University Robot Soccer Teams, at the University of Newcastle and UTS. This involves qualifying for teh competition, and then recruiting, organising, coaching and training student teams for the International Robot Soccer World Cup Championships in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

UTS-IBA Karachi Koalas were established in 2010 as a result of joint venture with the prestigious Institute of Business Administration (IBA) in Karachi. IBA was established by the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania. The team qualified for the International Robot Soccer World Cup in 2010, came 16th in 2011, 10th in 2012, and 5th in 2013. 

UTS-USTC WrightEagle Unleashed! were established in 2008 as a result of a joint venture between UTS and the prestigious University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). It was the first team that not only spanned two countries but two continents. USTC developed China's first computer and is the only University founded and managed by the Chinese Academy of Science. It has been consistently ranked as the top University in China by Nature Index NPI 2012 - 2014. The team defied all odds and were Runners-Up in 2008.

UTS Unleashed! I established this team in late 2002. We competed at RoboCup 2003, 2004 and 2010 using AIBO and NAO Humanoid robots. We hold the record for scoring the most goals in a game 16-0 in Round 2 at RoboCup 2004.

NUBots: I established the University of Newcastle robot soccer team in 2001 in collaboration with colleagues, lead it to the 2002 Robot Soccer World Cup. We took third place in the Soccer Championship and third place in the Scientific Challenges. An extraordinary result for a team in their first year of competition.