Talking River: giving a voice to the water

Angelina Spilnyk, an Electronic and Computer Science student, wanted rivers to be able to tell you how they’re doing – literally. Talking River combines environmental sensors that track river health with a personalised LLM that “speaks” as the river itself, explaining how it feels, why (pollution, sewage, and other stresses), and what people can do about it, all through live conversation with passersby.

The idea leans on a genuinely interesting insight: as our everyday vocabulary for describing nature has shrunk, so has our instinct to protect it. By giving a river a voice and a personality, Angelina hopes to rebuild that emotional connection – on the theory that people look after what feels familiar and dear to them, not just what’s scientifically important.

Second Stitch: charity-shop leftovers become blankets for rough sleepers

Rueben Mardell-Kearns noticed something charity shops rarely say out loud: as more people sell clothes on Vinted instead of donating them, shops are left with less usable stock – and Cancer Research and Scope alone have had to close 156 shops between them as a result. His idea, Second Stitch, proposed buying the clothing charity shops can’t sell and reworking it into warm, insulated blankets, sold at a premium to fund donations to people sleeping rough – just as our winters become more dangerous in our ever-changing climate.

Light Up Southampton: solar streetlights that stay on

Medical student Solomon Bracey’s idea started with something personal: a close friend was mugged and beaten walking home after Southampton’s streetlights switched off at midnight to save energy. Light Up Southampton proposed solar-powered streetlights that charge by day and stay lit until 5am, giving late shift workers, hospital staff, and students walking home a safer route – without adding to the city’s electricity bill.

Interview Threads: a wardrobe library for job hunters

Economics and Finance student Yash Bhuwania built their idea, Interview Threads, after watching friends skip interviews simply because they couldn’t afford smart clothing. It was a student-run library of repaired, cleaned, lent interview outfits, complete with a QR tag carrying a short, anonymised success story to boost the next borrower’s confidence, plus pop-up tailoring and styling help. Small, practical, and aimed squarely at the moment first impressions matter most.

An alarm detector, built for one grandad and now for many

Electronic Engineering student Alistair Razak’s grandfather has severe hearing loss and can’t hear frequencies above 1kHz – including his smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Razak already had a working prototype that listens for emergency alarms, distinguishes them from everyday household sounds, and replays them at a pitch his grandfather can hear, paired with a wristwatch-style wearable that vibrates faster for emergencies and has a range of nearly a kilometre. With hearing loss affecting one in six UK adults, and four in five people over 70, it was an idea born from one relationship with the potential to protect many.

Projek Lumina: printing confidence, one booklet at a time

Psychology student Amirah Mardhiah Abu Bakar founded Projek Lumina through student organisation UKEC to support underprivileged secondary school students in Malaysia. It’s a one-day empowerment workshop covering critical thinking, emotional intelligence, academic planning, financial literacy, and confidence-building – anchored by an original booklet her team spent three months developing, packed with reflection prompts, tracking templates, and practical tools students can keep using long after the workshop ends.

Though she’s no longer part of UKEC, Amirah is continuing the project independently, partnering with a clinic-based community organisation in Kelantan, one of Malaysia’s more economically disadvantaged states. With just £100, she can print and distribute 50 booklets directly to students who need them – seed funding for a project she sees as a long-term commitment to reducing educational inequality. Since winning 100 Big Ideas, Amirah has continued to develop Projek Lumina and has been awarded Social Impact funding. We can’t wait to see the continued impact she has when she heads home to Malaysia this summer.

• The Holiday Hub (Tashifeen Ahmad) – a shared events calendar connecting international students across universities during quiet breaks.
• Postable Swab Kits (Bailey Deacon) – lets stem cell register volunteers post their swab kits instead of returning in person.
• Mindful Interface (Anusha Agarwal) – a smartwatch-linked app that shields your focus when your stress levels spike.
• Student Donation Drive (Millie Duguid) – a freshers’ week campaign introducing students to stem cell donation.
• Fortuna (Tamsin Richards) – turns fast fashion’s unsold stock into discounted, personalised clothing bundles.
• Affinity (Yutong Li) – an activity-first app that finds you a companion for a run, meal, or museum trip.
• Manufacturer Vs Consumer Cost of Food (Rosemary Clark) – shows shoppers the gap between what farmers are paid and what they pay.
• ReThread (Lavisha Batra) – upcycles dead stock and old clothes into new wearable art.
• Empowering Student Mothers in Kenyan Universities (Sabrina Cheryl Nyarotso) – flexible learning and on-campus childcare so student mothers can graduate.
• The Vertical Watershed (Plato Tsang) – turns building rooftops into rainwater-harvesting utilities for cities prone to flooding.
• Fix & Flow (Zaib Uddin) – a campus repair service and decision-support tool that makes sustainable choices the easy default.
• Make Risk a Right, Not a Privilege (Yuzhe Liu) – a reversible fund giving young people the freedom to take career risks.
• The Student-Senior Homeshare Project (Yuxiang Shang) – matches students needing cheap rent with seniors needing company.
• Quirky Soups, Silly Smoothies (Nithindree Mendis) – turns “ugly” unsellable produce into free soups and smoothies for people in need.
• Second Plate (Narinthip Setthapanpanich) – a food truck selling surplus-ingredient meals by day, and £1 meals to those in need by night.
• Gym Surfing (Yash Karlekar) – a “couch surfing” for gym buddies, local prices, and fitness support while travelling.
• Grow To Go Green (Gregory Placidi) – turns unused campus lawn into a student-run herb and flower allotment.
• UniMed 247 (Adhyan Agarwal) – a roaming, student-staffed medical vehicle offering round-the-clock care to the city.
• Second Wind Gear (Oliver Payne) – collects and refurbishes lost or unwanted watersports and fishing gear for reuse.
• AR-TREE (Khyati Kapur) – artificial “trees” that shade streets, harvest rainwater, and generate solar power in dense cities.
• Read Together Circle (Fatimah Jeharsae) – helps multilingual families build their children’s reading confidence together.
• The Gabriel Initiative (Abin Anil) – a youth-led project incubator funding education and community projects for those who need it most.
• Calm Campus (Aretino Artemi) – shows real-time crowd levels so neurodivergent students can avoid sensory overload.
• Pad Pantry (Sara Chiki) – free menstrual products and myth-busting education distributed through schools and youth groups.
• FinLitPath (Godwin Dominic) – a gamified financial literacy platform for 16-25 year-olds.
• Nebula (Nabeel Khan) – a reusable water bottle with a detachable compartment for daily medication or supplements.
• CONFIDENTIALAID (Ria Hill) – a privacy-first AI tool flagging missed red flags for clinicians.
• BrightHubs (Zoe Zhang) – neighbourhood solar cooperatives offering cheap electricity and green-skills training.
• EcoPass Southampton (Rosalind White) – free bus passes in exchange for volunteering to pick up litter.
• HydroRent (Chun Kee Tham) – rentable hydroponic farm plots, managed remotely via app, for city dwellers.
• ReFeed (Nirmal Parikh) – smart bins and a rewards app that turn campus food waste into student eco-points.
• VR Technology in Classrooms (Sandeep Chamodya Wickrama Seneviratne) – virtual field trips and science visualisations for students who can’t travel.