UW talent: Student-built projects turning campus life into viral products

Side projects are rarely just side projects at UW. They often begin as jokes, frustrations, or shared student experiences and quickly evolve into viral tools used far beyond campus. From avoiding geese on the way to class and turning student stress into a score to gamifying lecture boredom, Waterloo students are repeatedly proving that some of the most compelling tech ideas come from everyday campus life.

Waddleloo: Mapping the campus goose problem

For many Waterloo students, geese are more than just wildlife, they’re a daily obstacle. What might seem like a campus running joke has real effects on how students move through space, especially during nesting season. That shared experience became the foundation for Waddleloo, an interactive map designed to help students avoid goose hotspots across campus.

Second year computer science student Anirudh Dabas began working on Waddleloo in March 2026, launching the platform publicly on March 23. The idea came after experiencing Waterloo’s famous geese firsthand.

“It honestly started pretty simply,” Dabas said. “I had my first real goose encounter at Waterloo and realized very quickly that the goose problem here is not exaggerated at all.”

As he talked to classmates, he realized it was a problem nearly everyone could relate to. “This felt like one of those very real Waterloo problems that everyone knows about, but nobody had really solved in a modern way.”

Waddleloo uses artificial intelligence to analyze user-submitted photos of geese and display risk levels on an interactive campus map, helping students navigate around nesting areas.

But Dabas says the goal was never to pit students against the geese.

“I do not see it as students versus geese,” he said. “The geese were here before us, and I think the goal is more about peaceful coexistence.”

What started as a joke quickly became a tool students relied on. Since launching, Waddleloo has reached more than 1.5 million views, attracted over 5,000 daily users during peak nesting season, expanded to Wilfrid Laurier University, and earned coverage from CBC and CTV.

“Since Waddleloo launched, the traction has grown much more than I expected,” Dabas said. “It started as a funny Waterloo-specific idea, but it quickly became something students were actually using and sharing.”

For Dabas, the biggest takeaway has been seeing students embrace something built specifically for their campus.

“Impact does not always have to start as something huge,” he said. “Sometimes it starts with noticing something everyone around you is experiencing and caring enough to build for it.”

Goose Trials: Turning campus competition into a game

If Waddleloo helps students avoid geese, Goose Trials embraces them. Built by a team of first-year software engineering and computer engineering students, the platform transforms campus culture into a competitive gaming experience.

Goose Trials features seven mini-games designed specifically for university students, including reaction time tests, memory challenges, aim training, and maze-based pathfinding puzzles. Together, they form a browser-based arcade where students can compete against peers across campus and beyond.

The project began with a simple observation: students were already looking for ways to entertain themselves during class.

The team, consisting of Nate Lamarche, William Cagas, Kavir Auluck, Mohammed Naqi, and Krish Vijay, bonded quickly in their program and shared a desire to build something meaningful together.

“We all knew we wanted to start a project together …[we were] in software and comp engineering together,” Cagas said.

But beyond collaboration, there was also a shared understanding of execution. The group worked over winter break and into the term, balancing ambition with realism as deadlines approached.

“There is a fine line between fixing bugs and overoptimizing, and actually launching,” Vijay said. “It’s really important that we thought of MVP (minimal viable product). It doesn’t have to be perfect, because it will never be perfect.”

Cagas echoed that mindset: “We valued speed and quality. We launched and we can fix it quickly.”

That focus on shipping paid off. Within 24 hours of launch, the platform had already reached over 1,000 users. Even early technical hiccups became part of the learning experience rather than setbacks.

“We were making noise and they wanted to see what was going on as well. It felt encouraging for us,” Lamarche said, recalling the launch in the software engineering lounge.

Beyond the metrics, the project also reinforced practical lessons about development, teamwork, and iteration. As Vijay puts it, “Learning correct protocols and working with these guys was an important experience.”

Singe: Measuring what it means to be “cooked” 

While some Waterloo projects solve physical or digital problems, others quantify emotional ones. Singe, created by management engineering student Neiloy Chaudhuri, takes one of the internet’s most common student phrases “I’m cooked” and turns it into a measurable score.

The idea came from observing a shared sentiment across campus.

“Everyone was feeling it together but nobody was actually tracking it,” Chaudhuri said. “I wanted to turn that into something you could quantify and share.”

The result is an AI-powered platform that generates a “cookedness” score, allowing students to compare results and share them instantly. By launch day, 227 scores had already been generated.

“When your score tells you you’re 87 per cent cooked, you screenshot it because it’s funny and painfully relatable,” Chaudhuri said. “That shareability was core to the concept from day one.”

Building virality also came with challenges. The system needed to feel personalized without becoming generic, and moderation became necessary when users began abusing leaderboard features. Still, the project quickly proved its value beyond entertainment. Singe later appeared in a product manager interview, where it became a live demonstration of Chaudhuri’s work.

“[The interviewer] got roasted, saw their score, and got the full product loop without me narrating it,” he said.

For Chaudhuri, the lesson was clear. “A resume tells someone what you’ve done in the past. A shipped product shows how you think and whether you can actually execute.”

The Aphrodite Project: Building real connections beyond campus

While many student-built apps focus on solving everyday campus problems, The Aphrodite Project set out to solve a different one, helping students form genuine connections.

The project first launched at the National University of Singapore in 2019 before expanding to the University of Waterloo in 2020, where founder Aiden Low was completing an exchange term. Created by a small team of computer science and psychology students, the platform asks participants to complete an in-depth questionnaire before matching them with one carefully selected person based on compatibility. Rather than endless swiping, Aphrodite focuses on creating one meaningful connection at a time.

The idea came from seeing friends become frustrated with dating apps and wanting to create something “more thoughtful and human than swiping,” Low said. He was also inspired by seeing a transgender friend struggle with dating and acceptance, motivating him to build a space where people could “be fully accepted for who they are.”

What started as a passion project quickly exceeded the team’s expectations.

“We thought it would be fun and meaningful if it helped even a small group of people meet someone or learn more about themselves,” Low said.

Today, Aphrodite has connected more than 85,000 students and alumni across universities in Canada, the United States, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Campuses including Waterloo, Harvard, MIT, the University of Toronto, UBC, McMaster, and UCLA have all participated in the platform. For Communications Lead Maya Bozzo-Rey, however, the project’s impact became real in a much simpler way.

“I was casually talking to one of my friends and mentioned the Aphrodite Project,” she said. “Their response was that they actually knew two people who had started dating because of it.”

For both Low and Bozzo-Rey, those stories matter far more than the numbers.

“The marriages and engagements are obviously very special,” Low said, “but even beyond that, it’s meaningful to know that something we built as students helped people feel a little bit more hopeful about connection.”

Looking back, Low credits Waterloo’s community for helping the project grow.

“I’ve met the most warm, accepting, quirky, creative, and loving people there,” he said. “That’s really what made Aphrodite possible.”