U of G Student Supporting the Future of Academic Research with AI
U of G student Supporting the Future of Academic Research with AI
A University of Guelph software engineering student is developing an AI-powered platform designed to help research teams organize data, maintain continuity and improve collaboration across complex projects.
The day-to-day workflow of academic research can be surprisingly fragmented. Emails, shared folders, messaging apps and personal laptops often become the default system for storing documentation, lab notes and datasets.
Recognizing the challenges this creates, student John Brennan launched Lapis Research, a software platform that brings all aspects of a research project into a single workspace. Brennan, a third-year software engineering major with a minor in commerce and entrepreneurship, developed the platform to help research teams better manage and track the large volumes of information generated during modern research projects.
Solving the problem of “lab memory”
The idea for Lapis Research grew out of Brennan’s experiences working in research environments. Alongside his studies, he worked as a software developer on a research commercialization project at Yale University and with the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University.
“I observed that day-to-day academic research often runs on email threads, team messages and files scattered across personal laptops and cloud accounts,” Brennan says, tools he says are not designed for the complexity of academic projects.
As research teams change over time — with students graduating or staff moving between projects — important knowledge can be lost. Brennan refers to this as a loss of “lab memory,” where experiments, datasets or documentation become difficult to locate or interpret without a centralized system.
“Experiments get repeated not because the science demands it but because no one can find the record of the first attempt,” Brennan says.
Lapis Research aims to address this challenge by creating what Brennan describes as AI-powered infrastructure for lab organization and continuity.
Applying systems thinking to research software
Brennan says his studies in Software Engineering at U of G played an important role in shaping the platform’s design. The program encouraged him to think about software development from a systems perspective, considering not only the technology but also how people interact with it.
Several mentors also influenced his approach to building the platform. Statistician and interdisciplinary researcher Dr. Daniel Gillis in the School of Computer Science helped Brennan better understand how academic labs function and how information flows between researchers. Meanwhile, innovation strategist Dr. Tyler Zemlak in U of G’s Research Innovation Office provided insight into translating technical ideas into real-world applications.
Growing a student-led research platform
Brennan launched Lapis Research in fall 2024 and has since expanded the project into a small interdisciplinary team of five. He intentionally recruited students from several universities, including U of G , University of Waterloo, Western University and Queen’s University. The transition from solo founder to team leader has been both challenging and rewarding.
“I have learned a lot about leading very bright, independent people,” Brennan says. “Together we come up with ideas, problem-solve, build software and try to understand the world of academic and business research.”
The team collaborates remotely throughout the month and meets in person regularly to work on the project and continue developing the platform.
AI as a research collaborator
A central feature of Lapis Research is its AI system, called Neural Core, which helps researchers navigate and analyze the large amount of information stored within the platform while keeping their data secure.
Rather than simply performing keyword searches, the system is designed to understand the structure and context of a lab’s research documentation. This allows it to surface connections between experiments, assist with literature reviews and help organize new research projects. To date, Lapis Research has been implemented by research teams at the University of Waterloo and Queen’s University.
Brennan says researchers who have tested the platform have responded strongly to this approach, particularly the ability to document and trace the full history of a research project in one place.
Advice for student innovators
For other U of G students interested in launching their own projects, Brennan emphasizes starting small and focusing on real-world problems. “Begin with a small, real-world problem,” he says. “Get to know the people experiencing it and see if you can create something to help.”
He also encourages students to take advantage of the university environment while they can.“The access you have right now to professors who are domain experts and to peers who challenge your thinking is amazing,” he says.