Abir Hirani (left) and Gregory Eloi (right) presented their take on the self-driving car at CS Demo Day. (SARA ELLIOTT/University of Windsor)
By Sara Elliott
In a crowded room at the University of Windsor’s School of Computer Science downtown campus, smiling students lined up to show industry and academic partners their latest programming projects.
The Fall 2025 Computer Science Demo Day, held at 300 Ouellette Ave., marked the 13th edition of the showcase.
Students in the Master of Applied Computing (MAC) program joined undergraduate computer science students to present projects on topics such as early cancer detection, Windsor Lancer athlete health and password protection.
Second-year undergraduates Gregory Eloi and Abir Hirani, known as team DriveCore, attracted visitors with the bright headlights of a toy truck equipped with a live camera.
The duo designed a natural path algorithm for remote vehicle control. Essentially, Eloi says they’re reimagining a self-driving car with potential military applications.
“Most self-driving vehicles are trained on datasets, but we want to have natural pathfinding so the vehicle itself will decide where to go regardless of the situation,” said Eloi.
“Ideally, you could drop it in the middle of the desert and be like, okay, let’s head to this location—and it will avoid any obstacles in the way.”
He adds that the system is intuitive and “plays like a videogame.”
DriveCore earned the award for Most Innovative Demo.
The Audience Choice Award went to AppleVerse 2.0, a collaboration between MAC students Namratha Muraleedharan, Sana Sehgal, Saima Khatoon and Jayanth Sapavath. The platform helps Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada manage its apple variety database.
Sana Sehgal (left) and Namratha Muraleedharan (centre) present their project AppleVerse 2.0 at CS Demo Day Fall 2025. (SARA ELLIOTT/University of Windsor)
Muraleedharan says the project has her waking up at 5 a.m. thinking about apples.
“We were tasked by Agriculture Canada to create a platform where they can search and manage their current apple database,” she said.
“We solved that, and now they can upload thousands of varieties automatically and it will flag duplicates. It is beautiful.”
Award-winning projects included:
Audience Choice Award: AppleVerse 2.0 – Namratha Muraleedharan, Sana Sehgal, Saima Khatoon and Jayanth Sapavath
Most Innovative Demo: DriveCore – Gregory Eloi and Abir Hirani
Best Overall Demo Day Presentation: PapDocAuthX – Lovepreet Singh Virdi, Tusharbir Singh Mutty and Chirag Sanjaykumar Ray
Best Poster Presentation: Numerical Fact Checking: Beyond the Scores – Gagandeep Kaur
Dr. Shafaq Khan, professor in the School of Computer Science, said 23 industry members attended the event, which featured 30 projects.
“There are four awards given, but it isn’t just about awards,” said Khan.
“It is a great opportunity for students to showcase their work. They really feel proud to show their work to industry—they are excited and enthusiastic.”